iahphx

A couple months ago, I posted my semi-empirical theory that -- no matter what some pundits said -- UA and AA were the best for ff mile redemption. I also opined that DL might be the worst.

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthrea...14#post6782814

Tomorrow, the WSJ will print a study by its influential airline columnist Scott McCartney which says the same thing. The story is password protected, although I'm sure a "sister" publication will print a public version tomorrow.

Here's the summary of McCartney's research, though:

"AMR Corp.'s American and UAL Corp.'s United were the most generous, with coach seats available at their lowest award levels on 14 of 24 trips checked. Continental Airlines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp. fell in the middle. US Airways, however, offered its lowest-priced award on only two of 24 itineraries; Delta on zero."

Given its source, I suspect this report will make considerable waves in the industry.

New York City Flyer

They said Delta is worse than US Airways? I guess it depends on the dates and city pairs but my experience with US Airways has been miles (no pun intended) apart from all other carriers.

US Airways used to give those "free tickets" for denied boarding compensation out like candy (because they used to overbook flights like there was no tomorrow). I think US Airways had a near riot when nobody could use their free tickets because they were booked as award tickets. US Airways later allowed the free tickets to be turned into $200.00 travel certificates.

Maybe you can find award seats on a Charlotte - Miami flight on Wednesday in July but otherwise without status there were few award seats on US

Delta has been "okay." United has always been excellent. American is okay. Continental can be an occasional challenge. If I had to rank, from my experience, United tops, US Airways bottom.

I'm looking forward to seeing the article tomorrow.

michaelr

This mirrors 100% my personal experience. As a long time NW flyer, I found it difficult to redeem their miles, not impossible but borderline. I had to work hard for the redemption, too hard. AA and UA are generally available within acceptable limits. I do not fly or collect NW miles anymore unless the odd "free" promo comes around which has gotten rarer to boot. I never worried about CO and DL but given the frequent feedback, I am not going to try either.

iahphx

What McCartney was testing was availability a few months out -- specifically, next June and September. My own "tests" were of a similar number of days out. Delta inventory is just horrible in such situations. Delta DOES release award seats 330 days out, the traditional release date now abandoned by some airlines, which MAY explain why their availability looks so terrible if you look 90 or 180 days out. On the otherhand, I will say I've played Delta's 330-day-game and it's not like inventory is plentiful then, either. I'd be amazed if they made a similar number of standard award seats available as UA or AA.

Regarding US, my guess is they would be terrible for int'l and Hawaii seats, simply because they have fewer such flights in their system than most of the major airlines. Fewer seats to popular reward destinations for about the same number of customers is a recipe for problems. McCartney also found them below average for domestic awards, too. My own experience was that they were not materially different domestically than, say, CO. Obviously, your mileage may vary!

Tenacious

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

March 6, 2007

Are some airlines more miserly than others when making discounted frequent-flier award seats available? It would appear so.
I recently checked available award seats on 24 routes for various summer and fall 2007 travel dates found that Delta Air Lines Inc. and US Airways Group Inc. often required more miles than other major carriers.
AMR Corp.'s American and UAL Corp.'s United were the most generous, with coach seats available at their lowest award levels on 14 of 24 trips checked. Continental Airlines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp. fell in the middle. US Airways, however, offered its lowest-priced award on only two of 24 itineraries; Delta on zero.

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/...406227537.html

nerd

(registration not required)

http://online.wsj.com/public/resourc...0305174521.gif

holtju2

They should publish a similar study about redemptions on C and F cabins on their alliance partners. I would NEVER redeem an economy award anywhere

UNITED959

Not to mention having AA miles (OW) and/or UA miles (*A) can get you to a lot more places.

Marathon Man

I shouldnt tell you this cuz then there are less seats avail for me, but hey, we have a newborn now so the days of us taking this trip are kinda gone anyway:

UA... 25,000 ECONOMY
BOS-DEN-Aspen

Flight usually costs about $650 RT maybe more if you go Feb vacation.

You need to book it 330 days out or close to it, but THAT is one flight worth the economy booking!

OK, FC is 45k, so still worth it by far, but the DEN-Aspen part is not FC as the plane is little.

MM

mtparadis

One thing I noted DL having "zero" availability is that his table obviously has many mixed awards, meaning they are "saver" for half of the trip. This is something that DL has just started allowing and should help bring the average mileage required down somewhat. In addition, I feel like if he was able to find SkySaver seats one way, he could probably eventually find SkySaver seats the other way for at least some of those trips by playing around with the routing or talking to an agent.

I also found it very interesting that DL claims to have already given away 18% of J seats on ATL-FCO for this summer at Saver levels.

iahphx

It would be interesting to know what the percentage is for comparable routes by other US airlines. While coach to Europe is mobbed, the business cabin is usually not (something about Europeans getting half the summer off ). It has always been easier to get a biz class award in summer than at other times of the year, although with there being so few standard summer awards available in coach these days, I suspect it's become harden (if you've got to pay "double miles," you might as well try to sit up front).

sapguy

Here are my actual experience with award seats for 2007 on UA:
1) Booked 2 Saver award Y seats for PHL-HNL-PHL with a stop over in LAX for July ^
2) Actually wanted 3 Y seats for PHL-HNL-PHL with a stop over in LAX, so had to use a Standard award for the 3rd seat - still not bad.
3) Booked 1 Saver award Y seat for PHX-HNL-PHX with a stop over in LAX for July
4) Booked 2 Saver award F seats for PHL-PHX on US/HP code share with UA over the April Spring break weekend! At 40K per seat, cheaper than the 50K required for Standard award.
5) Attempted to book 2 Saver award C seats for PHL-SGN or PHL-SIN or PHL-HKG. NO availability for direct or convenient one stop flight from January until August (the few flights available required 2 or 3 stops, and in some cases, required that I fly out of JFK instead of PHL). So I am closing in on 2 Saver award C seats for PHL-SGN or PHL-HKG for the early to mid Fall 2007 - we'll see in a few more weeks.

All in all, UA award availability, while not perfect, is NOT bad at all, especially when compared to US and DL where my friends and family members are trying to do the same thing as me and are shut out almost completely

This is the reason why I am a 1K with UA ^ ^ ^

redbeard911

Well executed study. I have been about 50% successful in getting saver awards over the last year. I've even booked a saver award less than two weeks out.

ziqch

I would like a study to find and compare between airlines upgrade availlibity for international flights using miles, now that would be interesting.

Boraxo

Exactly. The WSJ "study" is interesting, but not a real surprise. We all know that the base 25K economy saver awards are not that hard to find - the big carriers have so many flight options that you can usually find a connection to anywhere you want on or around the days you want (holidays excluded).

But international C & F availability - particularly to high demand destinations like US-Europe and US-Australia in their respective summer seasons - is close to nil. See my recent post about zero C class saver seats to Sydney for UA's (and its partners) entire 330-day schedule.

Ditto. Though it would be somewhat challenging to compare apples and oranges given the various higher fare requirement (UA) and co-pays (AA,CO) - one would have to calculate the total cost (miles & $) and compare to availability.

The numbers to Hawaii are particularly telling - zero avail. at the saver level. And that's just for a coach seat to HNL.

The numbers for Europe are not really useful - September is the shoulder season, and the carriers usually start running sales the last week in August, so I'm sure they are happy to fill up coach seats with a few awards.

I find that highly suspicious. However, from what I've read across FT, it appears many airlines are now zeroing out J awards from the inception of the schedule until just weeks or even days before the flight, at which point they release some "saver" upgrades or saver J inventory. So the airlines can technically claim that they have a high inventory of J seats at saver levels, but effectively there are zero seats available to anyone who wants to book a trip well in advance using miles.

Not to many people are willing to gamble that J seats will become available last minute for a long international trip. So they are forced - as a matter of prudence - to buy tickets in advance or cash in miles for the much less valuable coach seats (assuming Y is available at saver levels - which is not always the case )