From a redemption standponint, CO's awards are, for the hardcore set who leverage partners and routing rules and the like, an objectively better proposition than those offered by AA, for three reasons:

1. Star Alliance has -- or will very soon have-- multiple hubs or focus cities in most every major populated region of the world. This is especially true in the three largest regional air markets of the world -- North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. Oneworld is particularly uncompetitive on account of the lack of a large, diverse hub in the heart of Western Europe (LHR, MAD, HEL all exist on Europe's periphery, limiting their usefulness, and MA's BUD is a joke) like Star's FRA/MUC/ZRH or SkyTeam's CDG/AMS. This greatly expands not only the destinations offered, but affords numerous ways to get from point A to point B, and offers far superior stopover options compared to AA and the oneworld carriers.

2. Speaking of stopovers, AA has implemented the most draconian stopover restrictions of the USA legacies, CO's are among the most generous.

3. CO allows waitlisting of its own flights for awards.

Well, sort of. You have to redeem an award before you can waitlist for the itinerary you really want. But since you can't do even that on AA, CO still technically wins on that front. However, an ExpertFlyer alert typically accomplishes the same thing, and EF has AA award inventory, but not CO. So, effectively a tie. :)

BTW about 2 hours ago I was able to convince the CO agent to re-check and re-check and try pulling the two US 506 flights as 2 diffnt flights rather then 1 direct and finally she got it!

If they don't show as avail any longer it's b/c I booked them :)

It was very strange, they insisted there was no availability until I read the posts about breaking them up and got them to search that way.

dfyant, the trick is that US Airways sells the flight as a DIRECT flight FLL-(PHX)-YVR and on US 506 FLL-YVR there is no availability, but as two segments there is availability.

Dan

In my experience using the ANA tool and booking US DM tickets, this is spot-on. I've run across this very issue several times over the years.

The solution to this would be to fly a different segment to PHX. That will be tough, given the recent reductions US has made between PHX and South FL. However, dfyant could look at FLL (or FML)-CLT-PHX or FLL-LAS-PHX as possible alternative routings into PHX, to pick up the YVR flight.

The whole point of a "long sell" is to request availability directly from the carrier, so if that comes back as unavailable, it actually means it's not available as opposed to shenanigans.

Um, on a map, how far is LHR from CDG/AMS?

As other posters have said, long selling a segment directly requests availability from the operating carrier and if that comes back as unavailable, than it is truly unavailable.

We really need to take our collective "Tin Foil Conspiracy STARnet Filtering Hat" and shred it, CO is not at this time filtering STARnet.

Dan

Air Canada's Aeroplan has had a 100% perfect track record of booking my C and F awards on partner airlines.

And I'm talking about almost 100 award flights in the past two years. Mostly on SQ, LX, NH, LH and TG.

If a flight shows available on the ANA tool, then Aeroplan can book it.

Same with the 'ugly stepsister' -- US.

I'm also trying to figure out what two cities Amsterdam is between that London is not. Leeuwarden to Spain? He does have a point on Paris, though the merits of connecting at CDG v. LHR can be debated endlessly.

I strongly disagree with the sentiment that MAD is not a useful stopover point. I think he reaches that conclusion based on a misconception of what the European hubs are for. If you work in a major European city, it is likely a hub, and the legacy carrier of that country likely dominates that hub. So, for most Europeans, having a hub in the middle of the continent isn't that useful - they can usually grab direct flights to destinations within Europe, or with a connection to the major hub nearby in their home country.

The reason a strong hub is valuable to European is it helps them connect to destinations outside of Europe.

Similarly, the reason a European hub is valuable to non-Europeans in an alliance is because it helps them connect with in Europe and through to non-European destinations that require a stopover.

In both instances, you prefer a hub on the periphery rather than the middle. If I'm coming from the States, London is an ideal hub, or at least no worse than PAR or FRA, to go anywhere within Europe or to connect to Asia. If I'm coming from within Europe, Madrid is a perfect stopover for going to all sorts of African destinations. It being on Europe's periphery is a bonus, not a negative.

I am really not of any reason why OW's European hubs are any less useful than STAR or SKY's.

Where STAR and to some degree SKY is fairly useless and OW excels is South America, where LAN is truly king.

Dan

Star Alliance will be the elephant in the room in South America once CM and JJ join. Give it 18 months.

Well, Delta does need to do something to prevent you from using all those miles they have been minting. :D

OW's Euro hubs are less useful for traveling within Europe, unless you are traveling to/from one of the hubs. Further, there are a lot of city-pairs in Europe where BA or IB doesn't even publish fares, such as FCO-AMS or ATH-WAW, making travel on the alliance much more costly and inconvenient vs. SkyTeam or *A.