Giving CO an A for award availability is a total joke! NonePass for years has had some of the worst standard (i.e. "saver") award availability in the industry and there are no signs that is changing anytime soon.

Based on my award redemption experience, I would rate the programs as follows:

AA A
UA B+
US (pre-merger: B- post-merger: D...and falling)
NW C-
DL D
CO F

US award availability has taken a significant downturn with the merger. Much tighter restrictions and so many blackout dates that Dividend Miles may soon surpass NonePass as the worst program.

I don't disagree with that at all. I spend most of my miles on trips booked well in advance, because they tend to be international and we like to plan those out well.

Perhaps it's because I've been so AA-focused for so long, where there are no last minute pure awards allowed at all. (You can do what is essentially a Cash & Points type award if you like.) They may dump the inventory to the proper booking classes for a 25k award, but you still have to pay cash plus the miles to get the seat.

So, where I was going was...if DL regularly dumps inventory and allows people to actually book it without copays, it might be kind of fun to play the game once in a while.

I would give USAir an F and UAL a B+. There is no award availability (not a single day) for the months of Jan., Feb., March, or early-April of 2007 using a 25K award from DAY, CVG, or CMH to DEN.

On the other hand, UAL had multiple flights on my first choice of days from all three of those airports.

Similarly, I attempted to book a flight last fall to London for travel this summer and had no luck on USAir, but was able to do so on UAL.

I think it's great that unsold inventory gets loaded in the system, particularly with the demise of bereavement fares on CO and elsewhere. But last minute inventory is not too useful to the vast majority of people who want to use their miles in advance and must request vaction time off from work weeks if not months in advance. And as you point out, all airlines seem to be regularly adding last minute FF inventory. So for those reasons, I don't think rating last minute FF inventory is particularly useful except maybe for people who attend a lot of funerals or perhaps seniors and others who have time and funds to fly at the drop of a dime

The Consumer Reports study provides a nice baseline for a comparison of mileage redemption among programs. The major flaw (from an FTer perspective) is that it does not analyze upgrades or C/F inventory nor partner inventory (though I could be mistaken on all of that). By comparison, the LAT study is worse than worthless, because it gives looks only at online FT inventory which we all know is notoriously inaccurate (at least for UA).

Another flaw in the article - he claimed for NW:
"The bad: No optional dates for flights at 25,000 miles."

That's not true if you log in as a WP member. Then you get the same type of availability calendar that he raved about for CO.

You might not get the flight, but you do see the optional dates.

It looks like this "reporter" (and the quotes are deliberate because there's not much real reporting there IMHO) didn't even both to create accounts at these airline websites. Instead he searched for availability without logging in, at least that's what it seems.

Flawed.

I think Airlines are WORSE than article
 

I don't travel a ton but over the years have accumulated alot of points ... now I am trying to book travel and it is nearly impossible. Never used to be that bad.

Even booking 5 months in advance there are no seats ! Ridiculous ! And now airlines are asking 100,000 points to go to Europe. What happened to the 50,000 NA-Europe or 25,000 within US ... almost impossible to get.

I was looking at NW ... and entered mid week dates in beginning of November (it was 8 months out at the time) from Bos - Pheonix (so no holidays, no Fridays , nothing) and the best I could come up with was 37,500 miles.

It's frustrating.

My wife and I are looking at booking travel to Nice on Fri of Sept long weekend. We had points left over from Singapore Airlines ... booked return trip on high demand days for 50,000 miles. It was a snap ... no problems at all (travel is on Lufthansa).

As usual Singapore leaves the US in the dust with service.

It's 50k to Europe on NWA, so I guess you're complaining about the 100k business seats. I was wondering if you called NW for tickets to Nice at the time, or if you only checked online. The nonstops appear to be on partners which limits availability.

That's weird because I just tried 5 months advance from today and was given 4 flight options at 25k for Nov. 9th returning 1 week later. If you have the NWA Visa discount, you can get it for 17,500.

NW "standard" award tickets
 

Never is a long time!

I went back 6 months in my WPs account and find that NW has issued
Perk Saver (standard) awards to me as follows;
2 tickets- MSP/YVR-LAX/MSP (This trip pending in September)
2 tickets-MSP/PDX
2 tickets-MSP/LAS

2-30,000 mile UGS to WBC from coach Y fares ($2215.00ea) MSP/CPH, BGO/MSP. (This trip pending the end of June)

In my case the hardest part to qualify for Perk Saver has been the requirement for a Saturday night stay.

Ottofocus

For popular destinations/times, I wouldn't expect seats to be available 5 months in advance. They probably all got picked off by the people who book 330+ days in advance as soon as the schedule opens up.

Maybe if they did...but they don't. I neglected to mention in my earlier post that in addition to miles I would be charged a $50 'last minute ticketing' fee. :td: :td:

Since all the airlines (well, including UA going forward) charge it, I considered it pretty much a wash and therefore didn't include it in my analysis, since my goal was to compare airlines to each other, not conclude whether or not the offerings were a good deal.

You know, some people who have very demanding jobs just can't plan 330 days in advance. That, I guess, is why I am sitting with 70,000 useless NWA miles.

Hi all,

From personal experience, and I travel at the last minute, I have never had a problem with either CO or UA. I would say for advance bookings UA is much better then CO in regard to award levels and availability. We are already booked for 3 25K award seats into SAN and out of LAS to EWR on New Years Day. The 1-1-97 flt we are on is already showing zero availability in almost all buckets so we are hoping to be bounced.

This year was really amazing though for Europe. I had a last minute trip to Europe and due to the cities (into IST and out of VCE) my choices were best on Star Alliance. I tried DL and gagged at the 250K award for Business Elite. Was able to snag a 80K J award out on Swiss (Privatair) and return on TAP (a 310 but not bad). The funny thing was the res agent kept saying I was very LUCKY to get this as everything else was sold out. That has never been the case in the past on a booking within one week of departure. Flights to/from Europe are full with paying pax it seems.

Cheers

On the AA forum someone just asked about getting an award ticket to Germany for the World Cup. Considering it's the most popular sporting event and happens in a few days, it was nice to see he got award tickets (!)

I think flyers overlook partners sometime. That routing involved AA miles on Iberia. I had 4 tickets to the Olympics in Athens, in 2004, also involving Iberia into Europe, and using AA miles.

My experience - as a 1K, not just as UGS - has been COMPLETELY different than yours. In the past year I sent my wife (C class) and 2 kids JFK-LHR (E+) , my daughter went R/T BOS-MAD F class and ORD-MAD E+, my son went to Singapore in E+, and my wife and I are just about to go IAD-VIE in C next week. And virtually all of this travel was on exactly the day I wanted...in one case we had to shift an outbound flight by a day. All it takes is persistence, knowing what the possible routings are, and finding (via the phone) an international MP agent who is willing to work with you to find a solution. But if you have a lot of extra miles available because you haven't been able to redeem them, may I suggest coupon connection? At least you can get a hotel room or 3.