I have 450,000 Equity Miles that I would like to use for Trans World One trips to Europe and Hawaii before they lose much of their value under the new award chart. I no longer fly TWA, as their route structure is not compatible with my travels and thus do not have any elite status.

My efforts to redeem these miles have been generally unsuccessful. While I realize that TWA has significantly reduced its European route structure, it also seems to allocate very few seats for award travel. I have tried to make reservations for the near future and for a year in advance and for various times in between. Generally I am told no seats are available for multi-month periods. I have several million miles on various other carriers and have never had anything near this kind of difficulty redeeming awards; even on those carriers I do not have elite status.

When speaking with TWA’s service center, I have been told overall they allocate very few seats for awards and on many flights and on certain days of the week (not officially black-out dates) they allocate no award seats. Even getting the domestic award seats from Denver to New York (when available at non peak times months in advance) to connect to an international flight (that is not available anyway) would involve several hour waits between connecting flights. I have spoken with a couple of open supervisors who confirm the very limited inventory and say they constantly receive complaints. They also claim they have no authority to make exceptions as the inventory is solely controlled by the marketing department. One supervisor even (surprisingly) speculated that seats are so limited as they want to force people to use their miles under the new award chart so as to minimize TWA’s liability.

My question is does anyone with recent TWA experience have any ideas or strategies for getting award seats? I could probably get them to comp their mid level elite, as I have mid level or top level elite status on a several carriers. Does elite status help one obtain award seats on TWA? However, I hate to do this, as I really will not fly them much, if at all. Your thought are much appreciated.

Many thanks.