L.A. Times rates Award Availability-Do you agree?
 

Today's L.A. Times Travel Section has a story by James Gilden, The Internet Traveler which rates U.S. Airlines by award availibility, web site usefulness for booking award travel, etc.

"Your assignment: Fly free with frequent-flier miles
When the airlines are put to the booking test, how giving are they? You might be surprised.
May 28, 2006

THIS year marks the 25th birthday of frequent-flier award programs and the 10th anniversary of the online travel business. You'd think that would have been plenty of time to make it easy for travelers to book their frequent-flier travel online.

The ability to book frequent-flier awards online has evolved substantially in the last year. These days, it is at least possible to book award travel at the major U.S. airlines' websites. But increased demand for a decreased supply of seats can make finding a ticket a frustrating exercise.
"I did interviews with the managers of the three top programs — American, United and Delta," said Tim Winship, a frequent-flier expert and publisher of FrequentFlier.com. "They were totally in denial about the degree to which consumers are dissatisfied with the whole award availability issue."

I examined the online functionality at the six largest airlines with "traditional" frequent-flier programs.

I began with a simple premise: Most travelers have learned to be flexible when booking award travel. Thus, it behooves the airlines to provide them with flexible functionality to ease the process."

http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-...avel-headlines (You may have to register to see the full story)

AA gets an A minus
Continental gets an A
NW gets a C
UAL a B minus
US Air a B

What do you thinnk?

Of the ones I'm familiar with, I would rank them as follows:

(1) WN
(2) AA
(3) UA
(4) DL
(5) NW
(6) US
(7) YX

I guess if we were assigning letter grades, WN would be at the A- level, AA and UA would be in the B range, DL and NW would be C's, US would be a D, and YX is at big fat F and digging.

Among the big four from AA through NW on my list, I'm at least thankful that they seem to have different strengths and weaknesses. AA has gotten me to Hawaii with relative ease, UA has provided me nice J awards to Europe on my desired dates, DL took me to Belize when no one else had awards there, and NW has been good for last minute MCI-DTW R/T's for 25k to visit family - when that route is always $400+ per ticket.

Long ago, I loved US. You could call them on the phone and they'd work with you to find availability - last minute, peak season, premium cabin - I had them find me oddball routings to get great awards. But in the past 5 years or so, I haven't redeemed hardly a thing and their website wouldn't display any of their partner airline availability at all.

I've never actually found ANYTHING in terms of YX availability. I like the airline enough when I have to fly to Boston, but I'm skeptical that I'll ever see an award on them. I can't even get cheap junk like MCI-MCO to show up with award availability.

From my experience this is my list:
AA=A
DL=A-
NW=D
UA=B+
US=C

FYI I have never been able to book any of my UA award travel online. Most of the time the United.bomb is unable to price/ticket normal RT's too.

I dunno...I think website functionality and underlying award availability are two different things. Though maybe one reason airlines drag their feet on website functionality is out of fear it'll make the availability situation more transparent. Instead of sitting on the phone while someone tells you nothing is available for a month, you can see it on a calendar! Then you quickly tinker with other possibilities and see they're not available, either! (Pretty much the experience with NW...)

Imagine if this area had a set of solid metrics and the airline that came out on top was willing to advertise it, like they'll do with on-time arrivals or the J.D. Power surveys. Competition working in favor of the customer...what a novel idea.

That's a great topic to bring up. Consumer Reports ranked the airlines in October of last year--for reward travel. That ranking was.

American
Northwest
Alaska
Delta
USAirways
Continental
United
America West

They considered blackout dates, if standard rewards were available, things like that. It's hard to be objective with these types of rankings. When the analysis was performed, USAirways and America West were still separate entities.

CO an A??? :confused: He also called JFK a UA hub...where has he been? Looks like he needs to take another look.

Why do articles like this always talk about the 50k domestic award? Has anyone in the past 25 years ever used one of these EVER?! If I can't get a saver economy award somewhere, there's always a saver business award available.

I've used them on occasion before - on airlines that allow award redemption for same-day flights, they can be a good value. Although these days it's rarer because even last minute, I can usually find an option in the $600 R/T range, thank you Southwest.

I only have experince with Delta SkyMiles and I do agree with them. Delta's website is set up to sell 50,000 tickets. Delta makes it very hard to find 25,000 mile tickets.

The weird part is that Delta actually does seem to have good availability internationally. Perhaps it's because the website can't handle the bookings, so only someone intent enough to call a human about it is going to find out whether or not they have seats. On that BZE trip I booked with DL, during Christmas week, I had 3 "saver" seats for ATL-BZE booked five months before the trip. But the MCI-ATL and ATL-MCI segments didn't clear until a week before the trip, even though the MCI-ATL piece was on Christmas Day!! (We were prepared to buy AirTran tickets to catch our flights, as it was still the best overall way to get to BZE.) The MCI-ATL segment had maybe 30 pax in the entire aircraft, and the BZE flight was completely sold out. Yet if anybody wanted a simple 25k seat to Atlanta - even willing to fly on an empty Christmas Day flight - they couldn't have gotten it unless they got lucky checking a few days prior to the flight.

I'm familiar w/ AA and UA. I'd definitely rank AA over UA in terms of AWARD AVAILABILITY. Now, as to product and other FF program benefits...that goes to UA.

What airline have you been flying. On NWA, theres never a saver anything available, and that is the reason I have accumulated millions of miles, becasue I can't use them.

'Award Availability' is such a frustrating term, because it encompasses so much. A breakdown would so helpful.

* domestic vs. international
* economy vs. business class
* standard award vs. saver award
* trunk route vs. business route vs. leisure route
* time of year
* elite status of passenger
* award booking advance notice
* nonstops vs. 1 connection vs. 2 connections

I know it seems like a tall order, but all of those variables can really change the evaluation of a given program's award availability.

For example, if one is willing to wait until 2-3 days prior to their desired departure, every FFP usually opens up seats around that time. Every program should get an 'A' from those who understand how the award availability 'game' is played and book awards successfully last minute. But, how many regular members will play 'chicken' with the FFPs like that?

For people who want more CERTAINTY of award availability, they should become top-tier with UA and CO, who guarantee in writing that their top-tier members get preferred award access. Better yet, AC actually provides that guarantee for both Economy and Business Class.

Wisdom here on Flyertalk is that UA is light years ahead of CO when it comes to cashing in your miles at the saver (25,000 domestic) level.

dh