Originally Posted by
edgewood49
I hear you and have had the same experience over the years it's just when I look at award availability and on whom they are showing it raised the question why is BA so dominate especially when they had huge and in todays world totally uncalled for fuel surcharges? Interesting. Now I am not saying I feel an entitlement here far from it but this is not the award "view" that I have seen over the years and at this time which is when I begin the process of taking a personal trip.
On AS I already have 15 business trips booked for 2015 so I earn the miles
Sorry, stupid typo earlier... TATL, not transcon. Anyway, I agree the surcharges are ridiculous. Without an insider view to what drives the search results, it's hard to know why BA dominates. I feel like I know how to "force" it well enough to see the specific award I want, if it's available. One assumes that BA would show up more often simply because as the expensive option, that's what's left over after the good deals are taken. And yet sometimes other options just appear out of nowhere in large blocks, so...
If I had to speculate on a possible reason for that, it would be a) klm/AF inventory really does come and go like that, b) some intmittant technical issue with loading/querying their system for those seats, or c) Alaska has their own controls that affect which partner awards are available. Those are just the ones that spring to mind. All of those things happen in the industry, but who knows? I give them my positive and negative feedback a couple of times a year, and this has been included in times past. One assumes they track the concerns that people raise, right?