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.

I thought Plats and EXPlats get the same extra award availability. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.

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.