EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: I am guessing that the general availability of award seats is not always equal across FF programs and/or airlines; But is the general availability influenced by the FF program you are a member of, or by the airline within the alliance that you are booking on, or the combination?

DETAILS: I have 100,000+ points on an Amex card that I need to put into a miles program. So I am trying to decide which program. The Star Alliance looks good to me, so I plan to pick a program with that alliance. I read that Aeroplan (Air Canada) is a good way to go for that.

However I also read serious complaints by Aeroplan members about real problems trying to get flights. I wasn't sure if the problem was caused by Aeroplan itself, or by Air Canada. What I mean is, I wonder if I use my miles on Aeroplan to book a flight on another airline, say ANA for example, is there a chance that I might face greater or lesser difficulties than using miles from a different program?

As a side note, if anyone has a general tip on where to dump the points from the Amex card (they must be dumped), I would greatly appreciate it.

Welcome to FT, dgfly!

It is also influenced by your status at the FFP; elites may have wider award seat availability

Thanks for the reply FlyingDutchman. What you say makes perfect sense, but I guess that if you disregard that factor, my question is still valid.

In other words, even though my status within a program will influence my ability to get award seats, I suppose that some programs and/or airlines are probably better than others for the average joe without a "level up", so to speak.

So I still wish to know if, from the viewpoint of your basic flier, whether some FF programs are better at providing award seats on other airlines within the alliance, or if they are all the same.

What I gather from reading the forums here is that AC and NH are pretty good about letting their members have access to award seats on other carriers. United sometimes (routinely?) blocks seats. I don't know about Continental. If you transfer your Amex points to CO, eventually they will become UA miles because of the merger, but what the new FF program will look like is anyone's guess (including whether it will be easier or more difficult to get *A award seats).

When faced with a similar problem with AMEX points, I opted to put them in CO's program because I have a lot of UA miles. But if you don't already have miles (or the opportunity to earn miles) in a FF program you can transfer the points into, then you should spend some time browsing and asking in the individual airline forums to get an idea of how easy it is to redeem the miles.

(By the way, this seems like a great question for Lucky - click the "Ask Lucky" link on the right.)

Airlines can have a few different award allocations. There are seats offered to their own elites, seats offered for redemption with their own points and then seats published to partners. Those can all be the same or they can differ, depending on the company's policies/decisions.

If you are booking on partners anyways then AC is probably the best bet to park the points. If you would potentially be flying on AC then it is a bad choice because of the cash fees (e.g. YQ) that they tag on to their awards.

I think "no longer" may apply. I haven't seen anybody reporting blocking in quite some time now.

As an aeroplan member, on routes that are served by AC with one flight per day (YYZ-SCL, YYZ-LIM, YVR-SYD), I have tremendous difficulty finding any business class availability at the lowest fare redemptions. I often find there is no availability on flights 330 days out.

However, if I wanted to redeem for a destination with lots of frequency (YVR-LAX-OGG) then it is no issue on UA flights.

If J class is important to you for long haul, I'd look somewhere else.

That makes me think that maybe I better find an airline that flies the routes I am most likely to take and park my points there. Its just that I read that Aeroplan offers better than average mile costs for flights on other Airlines. But if the other airlines are holding seats in reserve for their own program members, then maybe I better consider that.

No, I'm just a regular slob that suffers back in cattle class.