Gosh - I've never had a problem with US. I haven't been a frequent redeemer, but when I wanted the tix, they were there.

With any airline, the further in advance you can make your plans, the better. Being top elite helps, too - sometimes it make the difference between getting the award and not.

I was trying in January '02 to get award seats to Europe in October '02, with about two weeks' worth of date flexibility. US had nothing to any city in either class of service - except for an occasional single seat on one flight, second seat on another flight. I'm wondering if the uncertain state of US Airways at the time was what led to very tight award availability.

United's response was pretty much "When do you want to go?" We got two business class seats to Paris on exactly the dates we wanted, with a stopover in Washington DC.

I was low-elite on both airlines at the time.

I will give US credit for one thing though: back in 1997 (when I was Gold Preferred), a buddy offered me a tee time at the Old Course on a Saturday - while I was sitting in Maryland on a Wednesday. A wonderful agent at US Airways took my request and said "This is gonna be tough, but let me do some research and call you back in a few minutes." She called back with an 80,000-mile business class award, leaving the next day, DC-Boston-Brussels-Edinburgh, then back the on Monday Glasgow-Brussels-Montreal-New York-DC. Middle of peak season (late July), and no junk fees for the tickets - even though they were paper tickets picked up at the airport. To this day, I think this ranks as my best use of FF miles ever...

I suppose no one counts the fact that most airlines have "standard" awards with no capacity controls at higher mileage levels than the lower mileage level awards.

UA is particularly good on non-Hawaii domestic awards because their standard award is 40,000 miles, whereas most other airlines require 50,000. Also, on UA if you book a standard award, the reservation is booked in Y, which means you get E+ seating even if you are not premier or for everyone in your party, even if they are not premier. Also, changes follow the same Y class unrestricted rules.

It is always difficult to evaluate anecdotal reports on statistical measures. I have always found USAir easier to redeem awards than any other airline I have tried to claim awards on. I cashed in all my miles on several different airlines one summer to take my extended family on a vacation together and found more availability on US than DL, NW or CO.

I have no idea how accurate it is, but WebFlyer keeps award success statistics and they claim that US is the best at allowing redemptions at 72%. UA is next best at 59%. NW is the worst at 37%. You can see the results for yourself at WebFlyer

Since Southwest will give you any available seat, and they are in the middle of the list, it would appear that the data for this study includes a proportionally high requests for last minute seats. That said, perhaps US Air releases a lot of seats at the last minute.

Also, if you go to the bottom of the page and use the pull down menu to look at the months of June and July 2003, you see a large number of 100%'s. This would indicate a very small sample size, which would invalidate the usefulness of the study.

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Free Frequent Flyer Miles

[This message has been edited by pgary (edited Dec 02, 2003).]

Northwest to Asia lately has been just awful. Seems like they're holding back on lots of seats until 3-4 weeks out, and you've got demand now from DL flyers as well as CO and NW.

I've found CO to be not totally impossible with CO miles on their own system to Asia and within the 48 US at standard coach, but I'd still rate it toward the back of the pack. As in 2002, CO seems to be in a cartel mentality, wanting to limit supply so that fares will rise. Besides being an invitation for LCCs to gain market share, it has pinched award travel hard.

I'm having much better luck with UA than with NW, and I like the Star Alliance even though non-UA SA awards still have lots of restrictions.

As for EasyPass, RuleBuster or that stuff, it's like a gas station saying they're sold out of unleaded at $1.50 but have some at $3. People would decide it's time to change gas stations.

Fly Continental for the great service, because the frequent flyer miles are almost worthless. You can only upgrade international flights for $300 plus lots of miles, and only from the most expensive economy fares. You can only upgrade domestically from the highest fares unless you buy the ticket on their site. Use American for the best frequent flyer program

While I don't dispute the overall assessment of the difficulty in redeeming CO miles, if you search the CO board you will find that free tickets can be had on some routes, such as NRT-GUM or GUM-DPS. Also, the "best" frequent flyer program is a very specific determination based on individual flying patterns.

However, my main reason for this post, prettyflygirl, is to say, "Welcome to FlyerTalk!"

Wasn't there a survey done a while back with the results posted at webflyer?

My personal experience is as follows:

Soutwest: the creme de la creme, though you won't find business class or international travel on the menu.

United: excellent, rarely have a problem finding flights on 2-3 months notice, even to hawaii foreign destinations. usually there is at least one *A partner with space.

American: excellent, they have even found seats when nobody else did during busy holiday periods (at least for domestic travel).

Delta: good, but I have only booked domestic. my gf did not have any trouble booking hawaii for october (though that was several years ago -- and not exactly peak season.)

USAir: very poor for domestic seats, but they did find me a seat for Madrid in November (admittedly not peak season).

Continental: absolutely the WORST, never has seats available at Saver level and often not even at Standard level (int. or domestic). don't even bother if you are trying to book europe - it's a waste of time.

I've burned close to 2 million miles on AA in the last 5 years, so my redemption hits, to South & Central America, Caribbean, Hawaii and Asia have been excellent, including partner airlines. Delta has its ups and downs, lately I've been able to get direct to Hawaii in F in February 2004 for the wife and I and March 2004 for my mom, but Europe has been tough lately...DL put me on Air France with an extremely bad routing two years ago. US is getting tougher to score F to Europe, lately I have very few Int'l choices on US or partner UA, even as a Chairman's Preferred, but I was able to get three seats in to Paris last year around labor day, row 1 in an Airbus to boot, which was an unexpected plus. This and Flagship 777 in F with wife and mom on AA to Tokyo are probably two of my best redemption values.

40K is also the rate for a "saver 1st". once i couldn't get a 25k award, decided i needed the seat, and when they searched for a standard seat found me a saver 1st class seat instead.

the other UA perk is never a service charge to redeem or change dates, no matter how close to travel. can't say same for AS or AA or DL. (there is a charge to redeposit miles though on UA).

I have never had a problem using UA miles, even when I was looking for pretty difficult tickets to obtain--for instance, I recently got my daughter a trip home to Seattle from New York on the evening of December 23rd, which actually surprised even me. We were also able to book 1st class tickets SEA/SYD next spring, and during the BA strike at LHR, UA came through for us with last minute back-up award tickets. We didn't have to use those back up tickets, but it was sure nice to know they were there.

I only tried to us AA miles once, at the last minute, and they wanted to charge me $75.00 a ticket. Whatsupwiththat? I think I will save those for retirment.

Of course, getting what were among the very last award ticket in existence on the Concorde, using Qantas miles, was a real surprise, which we will remember for the rest of our lives.

However, the very easiest miles to use are Alaska miles. They are partners with everybody and can almost always find you a ticket anywhere in the world.

I tried to get a saver economy award to Brazil in March 04. UA couldnt find anything +/- three days, except one routing that had me going through canada on ac and waiting seven hours in sao paulo with no return anyway. This is supposed to be off season...