AA and UA most generous, makes sense to me

No surprise, AA and UA at the top and the rest lagging.

Booked JFK-SFO-SYD 6 weeks before departure during peak season and waitlisted for 30k miles upgrade to C. Seat maps consistently showed C cabin booked full on a 747. Missed out on JFK-SFO upgrade, and name was not called at gate SFO-SYD but hung out anyway. Got the last Biz seat at the very last second before boarding. I doubt they would have searched me out in E+ to escort me up front, they would have called another name had I boarded. Day before SYD-SFO return, my waitlist suddenly disappeared off my itin so I figured I got it. Got to SYD check in desk and was told upgrade did not clear but was still listed on res. I asked the agent to check and miraculously, the upgrade cleared and I got my C seat upon check in for both legs.
Just goes to show UA inventory management is as fluid and murky as one of those balls filled with liquid and snow that you shake, and I truly think that there are so many variables (missed connections, last minute cancels, holds that don't eventually get ticketed,.....) that you need to always keep trying, and take advantage of alliance searches as many times as you have patience for.

Well stated.

Glad it worked out for you.

Of course, this means the guy who wanted a free C seat and tried to book his vacation months in advance is SOL, particularly if he is using *A for any portion of the award (no waitlisting).

Also, the guy behind you on the wait list who paid an extra $500-1000 for a higher fare UA ticket so that he could use miles for an upgrade is also reamed.

I am unimpressed (no offense) with the FTer who redeemed for a seat in July/August (Australian winter). The airlines often run fare sales of $800-1000 RT from the USA during that period so you can figure out the loads.

Right, my point was I redeemed 3 seats, not one. I don't know about you but I haven't seen any post on these boards ever where someone was able to get that, let alone at the same booking. I'll be pleasantly surprised if you can show me I'm wrong.

btw, the seats are Biz so I don't think a fare sale on them will go down to $800.

SmartTraveler recently did a review of AA's latest FF moves and was quite impressed. As someone debating which program to join, this article and the ST article helped me make my decision.

Thanks for the link.

You should have also looked at the equipment and inflight entertainment provided on AA and UA. If you had, you would have selected UA.

I have redeemed many awards on UA and the only problem I have ever had was getting a C seat from IAD-SYD and only in 2007. I have always flown to SYD in C in past years and had to settle for Y in 2007. Seats in Y are plentiful and there are a few seats around 300-331 days out in F, but NOTHING in C.

I think the results may vary and isn't reflected in the WSJ's test.

I have had far more success in DL and NW in redeeming domestic coach awards than UA. In fact, I have tried for nearly 5 years to redeem a domestic coach award on UA with successful only this month! WN is, by far, the easiest to get a seat.

The trips that I request usually have a Sunday return, which are hard to get. DL doesn't have a Sat. night stay requirement so I sometimes use it for midweek redemptions. If other airlines want to cut down on redemptions for business trips, they should consider 14-21 days advance redemptions and not a Saturday night stay because the Sat. night stay puts too much demand on Sunday returns.

As far as international trips, my success rate is about the same on all the airlines.

I always assumed the fare clock was set to the airline's hometown, but that does not seem to be the case with UA. I tried to book a 331-day-in-advance ticket that I saw on their website, but the Hawaii-based agent said she wouldn't see the seats in her system until after midnight Hawaii time.

Seemed very odd. Does this mean you could get a jump on UA award seats (and maybe DL ones, too) by dealing with India?

For another real world example, I had a relative ask me this weekend whether she could use frequent flyer miles to travel from BWI to ANC -- any day in June. She didn't want to use double miles (made more sense to buy a ticket than use 50,000 miles).

Seemed like a difficult but not impossible request. And it would be a reasonably fair test of my theory (neither city is any airline's hub). The results: not a single standard award seat on CO, AA, DL, US or NW for BWI-ANC in June (at least one you could find using each airline's website search function).

On UA, there were 3 days you could travel on.

And that pretty sums up the state of airline award availability in America these days.

I simply don't believe that statement. Domestic coach awards on UA are plentiful. The last time someone made that statement on FT, I asked for the EXACT details of the itinerary that was supposedly unavailable and found plenty of seats available on a saver award on most days of the month. Anyone care to challenge me on a UA domestic coach award??

Your results are misleading. You're judging award availability by the thoroughness of a website, or lack thereof.

AA codeshares AS flights to ANC and you'd want to use both for this award. For example I know AS has more than a dozen daily flights out of SEA. Out of curiousity I checked BWI-SEA and see coach awards on 11 days in June. If you're serious, it might be worth calling AAdvantage to see what you can get on AS.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/hspr-H102; Blazer/4.0) 16;320x320)

It's trivial to find a standard award on UA... a saver award is a bit harder