It seems that all miles are worth about the same between airlines, but they are not. Take AA vs. UAL -- think of them as two seperate economies if you will.

One airline puts more miles in their system, but keeps the portion of available seats the same What happens? INFLATION. It now takes more miles to get the scare seats (eg award level increase) OR the seats are simply unavailalbe (serious redemption problems). So this airline raises the number of miles needed for upgrades, overseas trips and so on to aleiviate the redemtion problem. In short it DEVALUES its currency -- its miles.

Different programs have different rules. AA requires more miles for a peak summer ticket to Europe but it also lets you a free stopover in the routing---something United does not let you do.

Also, check out some airlines that partner in two US programs. SQ awards are FAR cheaper using DL miles than UA miles. Hush, hush though - definitely a good thing for DL flyers.

I think it may be fairer to AA to say that they give you a "discount" on awards to Europe during the off-season. 40K vs 50K. UA and many others are 50K year-round for r/t to Europe in Y.

[This message has been edited by leroy11 (edited 06-18-2000).]

There are numerous differences between airlines when it comes to award levels and rules. DL only charges 30K miles for a coach ticket to Hawaii while most other airlines charge 35K. CO offers US domestic coach award tickets for 20K miles from September thru May. US Air does the same for September 15 - February. Most other airlines are 25K all the time. AA allows both a stopover and an open jaw on the same ticket (US domestic, not sure about elsewhere). I was able to get a coach award ticket with a stopover and open jaw on AS using 25K AA miles; AS itself wouldn't permit the same routing using AS miles! Go figure! You can do a stopover on CO, but the cost for a domestic ticket is 35K; can't do a stopover with UA even for additional miles.

AA has managed to remain at/near the top of the award redemption list (based on % seats or seat miles used for award travel) even though it offers many more miles from other sources than say UA. The fact that the airlines are competing against each other keeps the award levels in check to some degree. If someone were to start charging 40K for a US domestic coach ticket, the other carriers would either match or the airline that made the change would likely find itself losing customers.

Mile King's last point is one good reason why we don't need a huge round of consolidation in the airline industry.

I was able to get a stopover on United simply by asking nicely and mentioning that I had heart problems. The stopover was, in principle, limited to 24 hours, but I was able to change it later to several weeks.

Mileking, Leroy11 and tango, you all make good points, ones that really point to the question of airlines disclosing both the supply (eg number of redemptions) vs the DEMAND (eg number of requests) for FF awards.
In my experiences and those of my collegues this is :

1. Becoming much more difficult accross all airlines.

2. Is particulalrly hard with airlines that market many miles (ie AA)

3. Is nearly impossible to popular destinantions.


This sort of supply and demand disclosure would help promote better information dissemination and therefore more competition between programs as is certainly needed.

I too fear even less competition in the business and think that the mergers may not be approved for this very reason. At the present there is already very limited cometition in many markets. Only the future will tell. Thoughts?

Different Airlines - Different Rules:

With British Airways I went MIA to London - stop in London for some days - Fly to Italy - Back from Frankfurt via London to MIA.

Delta and (former) partners SwissAir, Sabena, Air France don't allow this (according to the information I got from the agent: You can't have a stopover a n d an open...).

just pushing this thread forward, so that another thread gets lost/last

Looking back ten years, it seems that we have seen inflation in award redemption levels as earning miles has become easier. Does it accelerate in the years to come?