I'm a long-time Aadvantage member. In the past, I've always requested award travel well in advance and always landed tickets within a day or two of my desired dates. Most of my requests have not been for peak routes or times, however.

In early June, my partner and I decided to go from DC to Hawaii mid-summer. I expected it would be hard to get two first/business class seats to a peak market at a peak time on such short notice. And, as I expected, the best American could do (after talking with three representatives in all) was outbound in late August. They told me coach for around my preferred dates would have been no problem, but I wanted more leg room for such a long flight.

I always figured American had the best award availability of all the majors, because they always come out on top of those surveys of actual awards granted. However, I did have a bunch of Diners Club and Starwood points available, so I thought it couldn't hurt to go shopping with other lines for availability.

Delta, where people always gripe about award availability, had seats in late July. They would have required two connections, though.

United, suprisingly, had business class seats on the exact mid-July dates I first requested. The availability on those date wasn't a fluke, either; when I later asked to move the dates back by a week (twice!), they were able to do it both times. In contrast to American, the agent said coach was booked until December, and first (on 3-class planes) was also tight.

I take a couple of lessons from this, one obvious, one not so.

First, it's great to have a big chunk of miles in transferable programs, like Diners and Starwood. This allows maximum flexibility in obtaining awards to sought-after locations.

Second, the award statistics don't tell the whole story. Don't be afraid to try for award tickets, even to a popular destination, on short notice -- they might well be available! Try different classes of service on different airlines. There were obviously drastic differences in available seat inventory among the three airlines I tried, but they didn't match up with the expectations I had from the statistics and from anecdotes posted on this board.

Charlie

Very good advice, which I would like to second. I have been able to get award flights on very popular routes (FRA-SFO and vice versa) with LH over peak travel dates (Easter and summer peak travel times) with 1 1/2 to 2 months time in advance. You might not be able to get the exact dates you are aiming for, but it is worth a try.

Yes, things are NOT always quite as predictable as we might imagine!

In general, I have had pretty good success with both AA and UA in redeeming awards. I don't think one example is representative of AA's general award availability, particularly an example involving relatively short notice travel to THE most popular award destination during peak vacation season. I could easily site personal examples on UA and other airlines where I attempted to reserve COACH tickets far in advance, to far less popular destinations, off-season and have had trouble.

I do agree with chazas that the statistics don't tell the whole story. They don't address particular routes, particular times of year, days of weeks, flights, etc., but in the absence of any better evidence, I continue to believe that AA has the best overall award availability of the major airlines with UA a close second.

I also agree that miles from programs like Diners and Starwood are far more valuable than miles stashed away in a single program.

One thing people don't realize is that short notice can actually be an advantage. Airlines release seats when the date comes near to fill them up by any means.

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Chazas' situation may have been affected by the fact that UA has a lot more flights to Hawaii than AA. My perception (anyone know if it's reality?) is that AA has relatively fewer flights. So you have nationwide AAdvantage members chasing fewer seats compared to nationwide MileagePlus members chasing probably more seats.

Possibly, JohnA, except that UA was fully booked for months in coach and AA had plenty of summer availability in coach.

In the end, who knows? It's all a mystery, which is why having the flexibility to check several programs is a good thing.

Charlie

There is a strange rule of thumb that bookings on a given route are not proportional to the number of flights (or number of seats) available on each airline. The airline with the most flights will get a disproportionately higher % of the bookings. For example, if UA has 3 flights/day on a given route and AA has 1, UA will get significantly more than 75% of the bookings and AA will get less than 25%.

In the case of Hawaii, because UA has so many more flights than AA, the UA flights will actually fill up more quickly than the AA flights. It sounds contradictory but it is nevertheless true.

Another factor at play: I believe UA runs 747s to Hawaii, so tons of biz seats...

I too have had problems trying to get AA flights via US ff miles to Hawaii. My last trip ended up going RDU->DFW->LAX->HNL with the last segment on Hawaiian Air. This was after dozens of callbacks. I've had problems getting any US ff during summer to Europe, but DL ff came through for Rome for next week. However US was able to get me ff 1st class rt to Cayman Islands for the exact Oct. days I specified. I agree it is important to have multiple airlines to choose from or you may not go. Advance ff booking doesn't work like it used to.