Originally Posted by acregal
There wouldn't be a point to tracking award availability since you can, get standard awards on most airlines (provided you're a member of their program). I could never really understand the resistance to using the miles for a standard award (most people that work at the airlines consider it a very good use of miles).
It is relevant and there is a point to it. Read any given airline FF program forum on FT and you'll see a *ton* of complaints on finding Saver/RuleBuster/etc award availability. The point the OT is making is that if it was tracked and published, the airlines couldn't as easily get away with advertising "Only 35,000* miles to Hawaii" when it costs the overwhelming majority of travellers 50 or 60k to get there on miles. Requiring the on-time statistics has made the airlines a lot more diligent about planes going out on time than they used to be. I would think that this kind of reporting would have a similar consumer-friendly effect on mileage availability, or at least honesty in advertising.
I see that you fly UA where Saver awards require only 60% of the miles that Standard awards do - do you not see the value in that difference? For the same price, would you rather have three free domestic RTs or two? three trips to Europe or Hawaii or two?
Most people that work for the airlines don't know or care much about how flyers value FF miles because they have different ways of flying for free themselves. That and it obviously benefits the airlines for you to use more miles for fewer trips on Standard instead of Saver awards, so consider your source.
peace,
~Ben~