I have been comparing the different frequent flyer programs and have found that it is increasingly difficult to redeem miles for award tickets. I remember seeing a discussion on Flyer Talk about how some programs have recognized this difficulty and cater to their best customers with unofficial programs that may provide these travelers with access to award seats, even if there are none available. Do you know of any programs that do this?

Award ticket capacity controls are part of the broader yield management game. The idea is not to give award tickets if there's more than X% statistical likelihood that a paying passenger will come along, just as they don't sell cheap tickets if there's more than Y% likelihood that a full-fare passenger will come along.

Since they're dealing with statistical probabilities, making more award seats available means just accepting a slightly higher probability of having to turn a paying passenger away at some later date. Airlines will often do this to keep a high-status elite happy, on the grounds that so doing is worth more in the long run than the statistical expected value of perhaps selling that seat. It's not an "unofficial program." It's just good business.

The way this is done is to call the elite reservation desk and ask them to ask their yield management department if they can free up more award seats on flight XYZ. (Details vary by airline.) If the flight is fairly empty, so it's just a question of increasing the chance of turning away a paying passenger from 2% to 5%, they often will. If it's comparatively full, they won't. Where they draw the line depends on how good a customer the requester is, based in large part on his/her elite level, but other factors (as passed on to the YM desk by the elite desk) can come into play as well.

The worst that can happen is that they'll say "no."

AA advertises that there is extra award inventory for Ex plats. Anyone know how that works? I mean, I assume there's not an extra fare bucket for awards for Ex Plats.

United has saver award availability for its 1K... economy seats... and just for the member.

For Qantas, they have regular Award redemptions in the X fare bucket, but for Gold or Platinum members they're also able to redeem Awards from the T fare bucket. I don't recall seeing this additional availability explicitly outlined anywhere in the Qantas FF information, but it certainly is a nice bonus.

Its called get to know a ticket/gate agent. They can just rebook your award in Y or F class if they want too and bypass the whole capacity control nonsense. I worked in the business 10 years ago, and perhaps things are tighter with e-tickets and the airlines losing money, but still front line agents have extremely broad powers and discretion. If I am wrong, and you *are* or really know well a front line agent than post, but I think if a ticket counter/gate agent wants too they can hook people up like that, and just document the record with some BS remark like "pax reprotected due to wx on prior flight and due to cust svc," etc. I have even had agents tell me in the past they they juyst have to put a creative remark in the record and that then they can basiclly do what they want, and justify it with the creative remarks.

I think said extra availability applies to EXPlats and Platinums on AA. AA will have some extra (including a paid fare bucket) inventory available. You cannot count on it always, but it seems to be about 20 to 30% better than otherwise.