Dishonesty award for 2004:
5th Place: Amtrak, for cancelling its partnership with UA with no advance notice.
4th Place: American, for adding a $500 RT "co-pay" for using miles for upgrade awards. This is a major program change which substantiallly devalues the miles and puts biz/first travel out of reach for many. To its credit, AA did provide a good 2 months notice before implementation.
3rd Place: United, which no longer reserves awards seats on certain *A partners (i.e. Lufthansa) >90 days before travel. Used to be 330 days, the change will make it difficult if not impossible to obtain seats during peak travel periods to Europe and Asia. No advance notice whatsoever.
2nd Place: Starwood, for a massive devaluation under the guise of "adjusting" categories for certain properties. No advance notice, and a change that will put many European properties out of reach for many.
1st Place: Continental (repeat recipient) for pretending to offer Nonepass Saver awards in any meaningful way. CO's program remains the most dishonest of all.
Honesty in Miles Awards for 2004:
3rd Place: Delta/ICHotels, for honoring a 25K bonus mile offer that was no doubt oversubscribed thanks to FT!
2nd Place: Hyatt, for providing the popular FFNs with virtually no fine print. Sadly, the rules will change in a month or so, but Hyatt deserves credit for providing a good 6 months notice before changing.
1st Place: Southwest. Provided plenty of notice when it decided to cut the online booking bonus from 2 credits to 1. Still a tremendous deal, and no BS capacity controls. What you see is what you get. ^