Don't forget FF programs are revenue generating and profit centers for the airlines, not just marketing promotions. Airlines make $$$ from partners, credit cards, hotels, rental cars, flowers, grocery store, etc. These are not Free miles. The airlines have been paid for them.

As mentioned above WN is the only major airline I know that if there is an empty seat its yours. Just another reason they have been profitable for 30 years

Almost all of the major airlines have awards where any empty seat is yours. In fact, if you want to fly at Christmas or Thanksgiving, you can get a seat on AA without too much trouble, whereas you can't get anything on WN.

Southwest has been profitable for 30 years for a wide variety of reasons. They are a great airline if your travel needs fit without their niche. I don't mean to diss their program, but it isn't the silver bullet for everyone.

FWIW, I can accumulate 50,000 AA miles for that any-seat award much easier and faster than I can accumulate 16 WN credits.

I recently discovered that Singapore Airlines can be rather good with redemption. I have had to call them to check on miles flights in the past (my wife and I have accounts) and when you do this you get very personalized service. Additionally, in my most recent call this week, we were able to work thru several possible itineraries and the CSR came up with great suggestions and was creative in his thinking, understanding the ultimate needs of the passenger all the way through! I noted this with them and like them a lot. It is too bad I don’t have enough miles on them to do more. I just posted in the SQ forum that I might be submitting my UAL flights to UAL and not to the SQ account which only has about 16k miles in it now, but seeing as how the airline just called ME back to go over and confirm everything on a recent redemption, I am starting to think that their CS is SOOO good, I have to stick around and do the reverse! I may forego UAL mileage and just send all to SQ!

I have found that redeeming with them DOES often require phone calls, faxes, and the old school ways of things not all on line, but they do take care of you and they will try hard to find a workable flight on one of their partners. They are still partnered with DL too, where many other Star Alliance carriers are no longer/.

When calling them about trying to get a UAL or DL flight using miles, I learned that each airline gives INVENTROY of award seating to its partners. For example, if I were trying to fly RT to Houston from BOS using miles, I might find that UAL is only offering 1 kind of good flight using the std. 25k award. BUT if I call SQ, they may have 2 or 3 entirely other flights that UAL is no longer listing available for that award level!

The reverse may be true as ell, but this little known inventory thing is another reason why I can count on them to probably have the seats available for me, where the partner might not. AND you get personalized service because the internet is not as able to do the odd-ball or problematic requests. And since our US airlines are driving their customers to BE on line more and more, the CSRs are less likely to both know and want to know how to help you! But SQ still does, and very much can.

So, yeah, AA is decent and I think SQ is too. I hope it stays this way. You have to dig but awards at levels you want ARE actually still out there!

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gifMM

With recent promos, I am earning more free tickets than the number of flights I am flying on the majors. I can't do that with WN!