Originally Posted by
dkc192
Why would they do this?
Originally Posted by
angetenar
One reason could be different amounts of payment. For own metal awards, UA is paid by the Mileage Plus based on the mileage cost. For partner awards on UA, UA is paid by the partner airline at a prenegotiated rate (I think, some partners are moving to dynamic pricing of partner awards so that might affect this).
Exactly. There's a long history of programs, including UA, making releases of premium inventory to specific programs, but not others (including sometimes offering better availability to certain partners than to their own members). It may also depend on the size of the program . . . it was suspected that one of the reasons AS had such great SQ availability for a while (better than KF) was because it was at the time a relatively small program.