Least-hassel FF program
 

Hello all, I'm new to the site. I have had an American Airlines FF account for years and I hoarded many miles which I recently redeemed for a couple first class tix to Bora Bora. The redemption process was painful, to say the least, and now that I am starting over I'd like to switch to a different airline that makes redeeming miles a bit easier. Also, I now live in Boise, Idaho, so I need to stick to airlines that service my smaller airport ( United, Frontier, Continental, Southwest, Horizon, Alaskan, and a couple others). Anyone have any suggestions? I'd like to get a Business Credit Card for the selected airline so I can collect miles on my secretary's business purchases. Thanks for the feedback.
stretch

How much do you fly and where to?

Southwest might be the least hastle option.

BUT you will get a much lower reward value back per $ spent on WN compared to AA.

If you rather have things easy instead of more rewarding, look for simplicity.

I fly at least once per month throughout the country to various conferences, and fairly regularly to visit family in Houston, Seattle, and Omaha.

Hiya Stretch! Welcome to FT!:)

What do you mean by painful?:confused: People on this board will run down the best seats to the hottest locations through sheer willpower, patience and flexibility. Those are the keys to a redemption.

Redemptions with any program requires far out planning, especially for popular destinations. IIRC Bora-Bora is one of those locations. I would look at booking that at 330 days out.

I was just playing around with the AA booking site and had success finding the following:

JFK-SFO, in J, for 2. 50K miles/pax for the last week in May
JFK-FRA, in F, for 2. 120K miles/pax for mid April.

I would think these are great opportunities to redeem miles.

My point is, there are great redemptions out there. Some are a bit harder, depending on popularity of the location and the seats other carriers make available to your FF program.

Right now you can get 75K miles for an AA CC with a minimal spend. Get two and you'll have 150K. Get your SO to do the same and you'll have 300K between you, enough for another great trip.


Stick around and learn. I have learned more about FF programs thanks to the folks on this site than I thought possible!

Thanks, Gamecock. I will watch, read and learn. Still curious if there is one program over another that seems easier to use...

It all depends what you mean by Hassle. In my book I'd term hassle as high expense to redeem (in miles and/or $$). I'm seeing that, even though I live at a Delta hub, I should fly AA more since I get a MUCH better value out of my miles from them than from Delta or others I could use.

I'd vote for Southwest being the least hassle. The new program is a bit more complex than the old program, but every seat is an award seat.

Perhaps,

But OP does hint at an interest at flying to places that are off of Southwest's routemap, such as Bora-Bora.:p

Hey, welcome to FT stretch_s. I also live in the "city of trees". I think you ought to look seriously at AS & WN. Check their websites and see who flies to the cities you visit often. We fly UA or WN to DEN and UA to Hawaii.

We have a ton of AA miles & you can use them to fly with partner AS too. AA/MQ will start a BOI-LAX route in April. Gives you more options on AA miles.

The new WN program will allow this (but not at a good value). The new WN program will make it easy to redeem on any airline (WN will simply buy the seat on anyone).

Difference is how much you have to fly/spend to get that free seat. Go with WN if you want it simple; forget WN and go with AA if you want 3X the free seats for the same flights/$ spent to earn the points.

Virgin American and JetBlue also have very simple programs. Not very rewarding compared to AA though.

American AAdvantage is one of the top value programs in existence, along with United Mileage Plus. I do not recomend Alaska even though they have a lot of partners to redeem on because you cannot mix and match Alaska partners on a single award ticket (unlike American/United). Most of my high value milage redemptions require multiple carriers, making the use of Alaska miles less than ideal. Delta typcially costs 2X the miles compared to AA/UA for international redemptions.

Hmmm...getting 2 first class seats to Bora Bora isn't easy on anyone - at least, not if you want to be on the same plane. Is this the Air Tahiti Nui connection, and the reported difficulty in getting 2 premium seats on the same plane? More of a partner problem than an AA one, I think.

I've redeemed premium long-haul seats on all 4 of the current majors and in hassle factor I'd probably say Delta is the worst. Then in the middle CO is easier to deal with but UA has had better availability. (No one knows whether they will have the worst or the best of those when they merge.) Lastly, I've only done AA once but they were the easiest.

That's setting aside domestic - just long-haul business/first.

FTF

If you list some of the cities that you would like to visit with the miles it will be a lot easier to suggest an airline or alliance that will suit you best for example after getting the 100,000 BA miles from the credit card offer we were able to book 2 multi city tickets to asia going hong kong with stop overs in bangkok and singapore (only needing a 1 way flight between bkk and sin which is very inexpensive on discount asia airlines). There was no hassle throughout the process. We also booked a flight from JFk to the maldives with a stopover in Dubai using CO miles flying on emirates. The key to seeing availability was to sign up for a skywards account to see which dates were open. Once we were able to see avaliability we were able to call CO and tell them the flight numbers that were availiable and it was easy to confirm.

I recently used my Singapore Airlines' miles to book RT tix to HNL, was told I could take UA or CO flights but there was NO availability for CO flights and I ended up with UA.

AA has been the best and easiest for miles redemption to me so far for domestic flights. But if you hate it, i say go for UA.

The thing is, you apparently to switch to an airline that makes redeeming miles to a place like Bora Bora a bit easier, right?

Redeeming to a place that the airline doesn't fly themselves and where you have to search all sorts of partners is always going to be much harder.

So the only way to make it easier is to choose the destination you want to go to and then figure out which airline will be easiest for that destination.

And also be aware: Easiness is often inversely proportional to cost!

The easiest flights on an airline are those on its own metal the whole way if you're willing to pay double. You then can book at any time, get any seat that's open, etc.

Everything else is more complicated, because of the capacity controls. Capacity controls are not better at other airlines, and they're no better when dealing with partner airlines at other airlines.

So does any airline that flies out of your home airport fly its own metal all the way to Bora Bora (or wherever else you'll want to redeem next time)???

Finally, you say you hoarded miles for many years before redeeming. Well, keep in mind the ease of booking awards at different ailrlines can change from year to year! (For example, it might get easier to many destinations on AA if/when aa.com adds oneworld awards. Currently you can't book awards on aa.com unless they're all the way on AA metal, but AA has said they're working on being able to book awards on BA/IB/etc metal later.) If you're not going to redeem for many more years, you have to guess which ailrine it will be easiest to redeem on then, not which one is easiest to redeem on now!!!