MASTER LIST: which program is most available for awards?
 

It seems that with some airlines you gain the necessary ff points for your trip and then they do do not have availability. Which ones are more available when you tried to make award reservations?
In my experience Continental to Europe is very difficult, especially for the standard base points.
AA is a lot more available for awards to Europe.

American has always been able to get me to Central America and the Carribean when I want to go. Sometimes on its planes, and sometimes on those of Grupo Taca. The folks at it's partners desk have spent hours getting me what I need.

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Free Frequent Flyer Miles

AA can generally get me where I want to go - usually on my preferred dates, but sometimes via a funky routing.

I usually prefer coach awards, but I'll take an F award in most cases to get my dates. I need to do this about half of the time to get my dates.

I find US Airways to be the worst: I sometimes find entire months blocked out for award seats, even in non-peak seasons.

I find United to be somewhere in the middle: they are very tough for Hawaii, but I've always got what I want for Europe. I've started burning US miles for UA awards: that's the only way I've found to use US miles.

Obviously the answers you get to this question will be very individual because we all like different types of awards on different airlines. For me personally, my pure-award redemptions (as opposed to upgrades) are Hawaii, short-notice domestic, and odd cities in Europe (e.g., not the places where there are always cheap coach tickets for sale).

[This message has been edited by pinniped (edited Nov 30, 2003).]

It can be difficult to get F class awards to Hawaii on Delta.

We have redeemed a TON of UA miles in past year, and have NEVER had a problem getting what we wanted on a bunch of Star partners, on a bunch of routes to a bunch of destinations in all classes.

I dread dealing with KLM for partner awards - they want you to FAX or MAIL your "requests in" - even on the verge of 2004.

I hear anecdotally that getting an It'l Biz/First award on CO is all but impossible for most routes, most times of year, so we moved all our CO miles into Hilton, as did many others.

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~ Glen ~ sipping bubbly from UA 747-400 exit row 15A near you SOON!

Got always what I wanted on Star partners and UA, with, may be, the exception of SQ F-class seats to Australia from Europe.
No problem with AA either, found the staff always extremely helpful.

I fly AA and rarely have a problem with award availability. I am AA Platinum but I don't think that matters. But I believe Executive Platinum members get even better availability. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

I thought Plats and EXPlats get the same extra award availability. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Air Canada has both the absolute best and the worst award flight availablity. If you are basic, Prestige (low-tier) or Elite (mid-tier) awards are very difficult to come by, and subject to several blackout periods.

On the other hand, if you are Super Elite (top-tier, 100K/year) you have no black outs and NO capacity controls. As long as the flight is not oversold, you, a travelling companion, or even someone you want to give an award to even if you're not traveling with them, you can get a coach or Executive First seat (or seats.)

I have never had a problem redeeming miles in my LH account even if I want a flight within the US on UA. I absolutely cannot redeem miles on CO and for that reason I have moved some miles to UA via Amtrak and plan on moving the rest at the beginning of 2004. CO seems to be the worst of all airlines based on the CO board.

American has been the easiest, especially with all the partners. I'm getting very frustrated with trying to claim any awards on Delta. I still use my Delta Amex, I like all the double miles promotions, but I just can't go anywhere on Delta! I checked in October for flights to Europe for next August. The Delta agent's reply was "Are you kidding? With the Olympics going on?" Kind of rude, she wouldn't even check, and I wasn't trying to go to Greece.
I've checked Continental several different times for flights, and there was no availability. American agents can usually find something, they seem to be more willing to try different ways to get somewhere if the most obvious connection is not available.

In the lower 48 Delta has been OK for coach and some first. International had to start last July for first to Italy. AA worked for first to HI and Caribbean. Had to lose a bunch of AA back when they had the use or lose policy. I'm a MM on both Delta and AA, don't use anybody else.

United is my favorite airlines for award redemption - I redeemed more than 500,000 miles in the last twelve months for destinations ranging from 48 states, Hawaii to Asia. Best part is that UA doesn't charge junk fees such as rush service etc.

I also had good experience redeeming miles for Europe travel.

Delta is OK for domestic awards, however, I don't like the fees they charge.

Northwest is terrible in award availability - I wanted to spend down my workperks balance but I simply couldn't.

In case anyone is overlooking the obvious, Southwest Airlines has the best award availability: no capacity controls and only a handful of blackout dates. Your free ticket is essentially equivalent to two one-way full-fare paid tickets.

AA has been great for award availability. My only problem with them is being able to find award availability in premium classes going transcontinental very far in advance. However, when my honeymoon flights got all messed up with a schedule change by a partner airline (TN), AA was nice enough to get revenue management to release the premium seats for us. They didn't have to do that, but they did it anyway! Very nice!

CO? Why even bother!

DL? I've had friends who have had a pretty decent success rate on DL partners for international flights.

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... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

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. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

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...