I have realized over the years that airlines tend to have different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to availability. Thus, I always try to keep some miles banked with a couple different airlines to maximize flexibility. Here are my rankings for travel out of DSM, for airlines I use, when utilizing this strategy...
UA A-
-- excellent coach and business class ticket availability to Europe when using the Star Alliance and booking at least 4 months out (7-8 months out for summer travel).
--1 for 1 when securing FIRST class tickets to MUC on UA and LH.
--coach tickets to HNL are available on a regular basis when traveling through DEN
--only 5K miles for inter-Hawaii flights which are available 70-80% of the time
--I had some difficulty getting flights to Auckland and Sydney a few years back -- ultimately had to change trip to a different destination because of lack of availability 6 months out.
AA A-
--great domestic route availability from the Midwest
--2 for 2 when reserving Aer Lingus business class flights to Dublin (when initial flight on AA to ORD).
DL B+
Perfect when you book over 300 days in advance even to the hottest locations. I have secured St. Lucia and Cabo for New Years -- when AA and UA did not have availability. Generally hit-or-miss within 3-4 months before travel.
NW D-
Difficult to use miles for anything business class. Nearly impossible to use miles for travel in coach to Europe during peak season (even 300 days in advance). Your best hope with NWA miles is to redeem the miles on DL/CO routes which seem to have better availability. Shorter routes, such as DSM-MSP-MKE, and DSM-DTW-IAD, etc. are the only routes that have quasi-consistent availability.
Originally Posted by Boraxo
Idiotic!
However, I suppose we should be grateful to the LA Times for diverting all those potential customers to CO (who won't even remember who to blame when they find it impossible to cash in miles for saver awards a few years down the road).
My ranking - based on 20 years of attempts to use miles to fly during holiday periods and/or to fly to hot destinations such as Europe, Hawaii, Vegas, etc. - not for easy domestic transcons like LAT reporter:
WN: A+ (no doubt will change this year!)
AA: A
UA: A-
DL: B
CO: D+
US: F
(no experience with NW or AW)
US was absolutely the worst, no flights from SFO on any date in August 2004. Basically zero inventory for those of us who live here. CO is almost as bad though I did once find space (in C no less!) from SFO-LIM (alas ultimately redeposited). AA was the only airline that could find me transcon space during the holiday period spanning the millenium celebration (i.e. 1/1/2000).
Overall I suppose it is nice that CO offers a great search engine that let you quickly determine that there is no saver inventory for your intended itinerary. Vs. United where I will normally get directed to incompetent Indian outsource (or perhaps not as I can't imagine these people have been trained to handle partner award travel).