<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by brucemcal:
Interesting, but a little inconsistent in analysis. First, he says FF seats are getting harder to get because there are fewer, then he publishes the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics:
"And customers continue to get their free flights. Eight percent of domestic airline passengers flew for free in the second quarter this year, compared to 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2001, and 4.9 percent in the first quarter 2001".
That's almost twice as many FF seats this year as last year. Not a great reduction.
Bruce </font>
First, seats may in fact be harder to get in the sense that one's first choice of dates/times are less often available than they used to be. In the past, there were possibly more seats made available for award redemption that were just not redeemed. Second, with the financial problems of certain major carriers, I for one am more willing to redeem mileage for a trip that I would not have considered worthy of a mileage redemption in the past (i.e. it was cheap enough that I would have just paid for a ticket (and earned miles instead)). Third, some of us are reduced to paying MORE than we would have in the past to get the seats we want (usually double the mileage for an unrestricted award). I don't know how much these factors mitigate the supposed inconsistency, but I do believe that on SOME airlines at least, the chances of me finding the trip I want available for the dates I want without using double the mileage for the award are MUCH worse than last year.
[This message has been edited by rtpflyer (edited 11-27-2002).]