DL seems the worst to me. I tried 11 months in advance flying to Calgary (from LAX) and all awards seats taken for the entire summer of 2000 AND THAT IS IN COACH!!!! for the mid morning flight!!!! Only the 6am-+ was available. Return flights were not a problem. Only problem I have ever had with UA and AA is for fc or bc. Never a problem with AS!!! AmericaWest is also very bad in my experience. 3-6 free flights a year for the past several years, 1-2 before that.

To Anne -- I would be curious as to the ratio of award seats to passenger miles flown !

To others -- I was successful in getting US award seats over Christmas, but not during the blackout period (not due to blackout dates, but to capacity controls). I am still looking for Mexico over Thanksgiving, and the best I have found is using Mexicana and Hilton HHonors points at 125,000 per ticket, that is not unreasonable. United, Mexicana, American, Delta and Aero Mexico were not available with miles. American was not available with Hilton HHonors points either.

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Further to the post above, awards as a percentage of revenue passenger miles, United 9%, American 8.8%, Continental and Delta 7%, Northwest 6.8%, TWA 5.4%, US Airways 5% and Southwest 3.5%.
Continental and TWA reported a 35% and a 22.7% increase respectively, on awards redeemed in 1997.

Further to the post above, awards as a percentage of revenue passenger miles, United 9%, American 8.8%, Continental and Delta 7%, Northwest 6.8%, TWA 5.4%, US Airways 5% and Southwest 3.5%.
Continental and TWA reported a 35% and a 22.7% increase respectively, on awards redeemed in 1997.

Thank you ! Thank you !!

Also from Consumer Reports Travel Letter (June'99), rating generosity in terms of free awards seats given vs total/all seats available on the carrier, from data provided to DOT.

Generosity Index:
AA 10.2%
UA 9.1
NW 9.1
TW 9.1
CO 8.0
US 7.7
DL 6.3

This gives an average of 8.6% awarded, which was actually a 6.1% increase in availibilty of free seats/awarded in '98 vs '97.

Interesting to see DL so low. With 105 Million passengers boarded in 1998, which I believe is the highest in the USA, I wonder if that suggests that DL is stingier with their awards, than say, AA or UA (with higher passenger miles flown) ?

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A true "generousity index" would independently measure the ratio of successful awards/attempts. This is getting slightly off topic of JGill's choices of DL, AA, UA and US, but if you want an award seat, Southwest is the only airline that I know of that GUARANTEES a seat for any passenger if there is one available for sale (barring a few blackout dates).

I save my awards for "minor" holidays that sell out of the discount fares, but have full price seats available. 100% success rate.

Just a note about getting to CLT, MileKing. USAirways keeps fares unreasonably high ALWAYS to both Pittsburgh and Charlotte since they are both USAirways hubs with no other real options (unlike Philly and BWI). I'm going from Pittsburgh-Charlotte and my travel agent was amazed at how much it costs when you get hit at both ends

Finding cheap fares to either city on USAirways is tough any time of the year, IMHO. Dunno how that reflects on award seat availability.

dg1, I am originally from Baltimore, and also lived in the PHL area for 4 years. I found that sometimes an intermediate stop did help lowering the cost. Even had one case where the fare was cut in half (BWI-ATL-CLT).

Have you tried PIT-BWI-CLT or PIT-PHL-CLT?

Thanks for the warnings about CLT. I'm already well aware that US is the only real choice to CLT, particularly from DCA since it is the only carrier that serves that route. I have bought more than my share of full Y tickets DCA-CLT (the only thing available if booking less than 3 weeks in advance, even over a weekend). This route also has capacity problems with numerous sold out flights and cheap tickets at holidays go very fast.

I think it's hit or miss regarding which airline has availability around the holidays. I have redeemed about 25 awards, split roughly evenly between U.S. domestic and international (mainly Europe, but also Pacific and Latin America). With this small sample size, here's what I think:
UA: domestic, not Sunday return - ok. The Saturday night stay requirement is evil because Sunday returns are hard to get.
DL: domestic wintertime easy, otherwise, slightly hard to get
NW: Europe used to be easy to get but now hub cities to AMS flights are harder to get (noticed this just in 1999)
CO: October to London-hard to get except daytime EWR-LGW
US: Europe during fall, easy to get if flying on US and not partners.
TW: difficult to get domestic or Europe. Awards on Icelandair are easy, but more miles are needed.
Anyone with a larger sample size (I'm sure there are plenty of others)

Travellight, to my knowledge, United only had a Saturday night stay requirement for a couple of months last year? Many complaints caused United to drop it. I don't believe United has a Saturday night stay requirement on any awards any longer.