I agree with transparency, and I touched on this very subject a while back in another thread and also in another forum. I think what should happen is that the airline should be able to tell you when you call that, yes, there are 5 seats left for awards in this or that class, or 17 awards left and if you change your routing to this city, it will actually jump to 22 or something like that.

This WOULD help me not only know who to fly, but also, I would be less inclined to complain about never getting on a plane with my miles.

That would certainly be less of a strain on the airlines themselves, because they would not have to devote so many man hours on hearing complaints, reading and responding to letters and emails of complain, and they would be less frustrated over all when most of their mile-holding passengers now understood the process more clearly over all! Certainly there is a huge savings on everyone's part and you don't even have to involve the government or the IRS! It is simple common sense for any executive to do a cost analysis on!

As well, I have mentioned elsewhere that some sort of "waiting list" should and could occur in the world of award planning, whereas customers could get on the list to be in any award flight and use their miles if the seat they want opens up. It could be set up where you could get off the list later on based on certain conditions, but you couldn't just simply 'stack the deck' and abuse the system either. I do not know exactly how this would work, but the idea would attempt to get rid of that problem many people have who hear the common phrase, "well sir, you will just have to call back and try for an award seat again later--every day--until some other passenger changes his plans or something. We have nothing for you now."

You see, a waiting list mentality would enable the airlines to maintain you as a customer because right now, I aint calling back to that airline after so many tries where the CSR tells me to call back blindly tomorrow... No, I am going SOMEWHERE ELSE, and that airline loses my business!

Now, some here may respond to my waiting list thing and say that all it will do is make it easier for people to put themselves on every waiting list even when they don't want to fly (that's sadly why the airlines instilled those change fees for award tickets and that sucks!) but I think there is a far better way to handle that problem too. Stacking the deck is bad for the airlines and it has ultimately hurt all of us, but workable policies could be built in to prevent this if someone does some real thinking out of the box. What the airlines really need first, is to hire THOSE types of people!

I don't quite know what it is yet, but there has to be a way to do such a system, and I bet we can help come up with it if we really tried!

THEREFORE, I appeal to all of you--the fellow customers--to not complain about it all the time, or blast on each other's ideas and input, but rather, to collectively come up with these very ways and then maybe, just maybe, we can send a message to the airlines from those of us who fly them! This may actually get things done. Think about it!

I am eager to see the positive replies to, and enlightening expansions on this one!