CO also does an annual blurb in the newsletter showing the total number of awards redeemed, usually compared to the past year if they can show an increase. What does that tell you? Not much, which is how they like it. Someone using an EasyPass because they couldn't get a standard award, for example, would inflate the miles redeemed and still count as 1 for awards redeemed.

They're selectively presenting facts to try to lead you to conclude that things are all right when omitted stats could show a quite different picture. Would be interesting, for example, to see a line graph on the percent of redeemed miles vs. unredeemed miles outstanding by year. Or one that tracks both total seats and percent of total seats allocated to awards. That's the kind of stuff they keep under wraps and will only release if forced.

Anecdotally, I think there's a widespread belief that lowest-tier awards are getting very scarce to any place popular, "rule-buster" awards are about where standard awards were a few years ago in terms of availability, meaning as much as a 50% stealth devaluation in mileage value; that award seats available are flat or actually declining as legacy carriers let loads go up without adding capacity; and that the unredeemed/redeemed situation just grows ever wider. My own sense on that last one is that we'll get a real day of reckoning when baby boomers start to retire, but that's assuming hopefully that we don't lose major carriers before then. All signs point to "Burn!"

Of course, if the government did get involved the airlines would push for a stat they could "game," such as systemwide award seat availability. That way a half-empty plane to Detroit in January could be switched to a high % of award seats to make the overall stat come out the way the airline wants it to.