I will keep that in mind before I decide to make Air Caledonie* my primary home for mileage accrual.




*Yeah, I had to Google it...these guys aren't even in an alliance, are they?

I have a confession. I have only redeemed 3 trips.

One: Last minute ATL-SAT on DL. Ticket was expensive so it was a no brainer.
Two: CDG-JFK-FRA on AA
Three: Family trip on CX later this year using AA miles.

Had no trouble booking any of them.

Delta domestic rewards are never going to stop pissing me off. Award availability for March just opened up and I can't find anything to YVR out of DTW/ORD/AZO/GRR/SBN that isn't 40k miles.


These miles are just absolutely useless seriously. I am convinced 25,000/32,500 rewards are just a figment of peoples imaginations. I used.......like 6-8 months ago used to be able to get 32,500 rewards to YVR

My only recent DL award was MCI-ATL-EYW R/T for 32,500 miles. I considered myself lucky to get it... Would've been a $600+ ticket and I don't really have any desire to accrue MQM/RDM on Delta any more than absolutely necessary. I'm forced to fly them for business a couple times per year and sometimes their Marriott promotions are so good I can't help but accept the miles. But as soon as I can redeem, I do it. I don't have the patience to hold to 100k-150k to go looking for AF awards.

Last year I was looking to book a Cancun trip from LAX. Did find some sporadic stuff at the 35K miles levels with DL but there was one caveat: there were overnight layovers and multiple stops: total travel time for the R/T's range between 40 and 56 hrs. I remember that on one of the outbound flights I would have had like a 4 hr layover in MSP and a 16 hr layover in ATL. Seriously! Not to mention the extra flying because of the routing. I was like, "Hmmm what should I do: 20 hrs waiting at airport terminals or 20 hrs on the beach drinking margaritas." I ended up booking with United with a total R/T travel time of just under 13 Hrs.

I *sometimes* don't mind an overnight connection to get an award seat I want. That's actually semi-common from my home airport to Central America or the Caribbean since there are so many morning flights out of one of the southern hub cities. If I can leave home at 7PM or so, do an overnight, and then land at my destination at lunchtime the next day...I consider it just as good (better in a way) than departing in the morning and arriving in the evening. Sometimes that's the only way to do it anyway.

Of course all of these airports where I've done this...ATL, MIA, DFW, CLT...are easy places to grab a cheap airport hotel...

What I really hate is an itin that leaves me with a 3-4 hour layover. Not much you can really do with that... Nine hours presents options if you want to see that city or have friends there.

For me, it's US Airways. Hands down. They have decent availability but NEVER on their own metal when I need it at the redemption cost I want.

That's a close second for me. Maybe because I use them more often than TY, I have been able to use them. Also there are some flights that i really wanted and almost always got when the competition never gave it. So I can sort of forgive US.

Agree that their own metal is crap, but being able to book on UA usually works really well for me.

I, for one, don't find the thread title confusing. And I have nothing to offer, because I've usually found award air travel available when I want and/or need it.

However, my hotel points are another story. I find that redeeming my HHonors points for hotel stays is a challenge, not because rooms are not available, but because there are no hotels where I want to vacation. My work takes me to big cities where there are lots of Hilton family hotels. My vacations usually take me places where I can't find any. Some examples:

Normandy
Bryce/Zion area of Utah
Iguazu falls
Siem Reap
Cape Cod
Crete
Udaipur

My only recent success was when we went to the quilt museum in Paducah Kentucky.

Did HH have properties in those areas at the time you began doing the bulk of your paid stays?

If HH has a history of a lot of hotels leaving the system for some other brand, it hasn't personally affected me. Certainly been a few hotels I've either stayed in in the past or hope to visit in the future that have reflagged, sometimes to my disappointment, but not in such a pattern that would suggest any of SPG, MR, or HH has a huge structural problem on their hands.

Thank you. :)

No, I don't think so.

Totally agree!!! And it will only be worse if AA marries into it

Then you can't really hold that against HH... If they had all of those locations when you were earning points and then the properties start dropping out of the system for whatever reason, it'd be a different story.

Only sliver of hope: in that specific merger, it would almost certainly be AAdvantage that survives. The branding, the Oneworld alliance, the IT systems...everything. So maybe, just maybe, the FFP side of things would stay more like AA and less like US.