I don't want to start a war here, but I'd like to get the consensus of which airlines have the best award availavility for flights from North America to Europe. I am most interested in partner awards on airlines like Lufthansa and KLM.

From my experience, both American and United are pretty good but Delta has to be at the bottom of the list. What about?

US Airways?
Continental?
Northwest?

The way you have to look at this is from an alliance viewpoint. There are only 3 alliances, so that's a start.
I'd say there are so many Skyteam and *A options that with a bit of flexibility you should be able to find something on either.
OW is not as good because there's only AA, BA, MA and IB you can choose from- the other two alliances have at least 8 different airlines (each) that fly the route.

I've had some decent luck with Continental out of BOS. Actually it was combined with AF, so got a nice stopover in CDG! One thing you have to ask yourself is are you looking only to fly the European partner to Europe. If so LH Y is very small. NW, while its been a while, was always more enjoyable. Also depends upon your home airport. US Y is awful across the pond and getting worse as far as i can tell....

*A is best..

*A is best..

I managed to get two business class award seats for me and my girlfriend all the way to asia..via frankfurt , that too in december. I booked them about 2 weeks back!

Helps if you are a 1k or something because u can change your routing as many times as possible without any fees

No, you don't have to look it it from an alliance standpoint. Partnerships that are not part of alliances may offer better redemption than alliance partners!

I don't have a Europe example, but an easy Asia example: Anyone reading the AA board a lot knows that alliance partners Qantas and Cathay Pacific are stingy at making awards available, and the key to get awards to that the southern part of Asia/Pacific is to include in your consideration easier-to-get awards on AA non-alliance partners such as Air Tahiti Nui.

In Europe, AA's non-OW partners include Brussels Airlines (SN).

And btw in OW you left out AY (Finnair). Yes, on the map it looks like its at the far corner, but Europe is so compact it's not that far out of the way for a signficant chunk of Europe (and it's much nicer seats in economy than BA).

I think you need to explain what you're interested in better. Are you particularly wanting to fly partners rather than the home airline, or do you simply mean you want to include partner availability? (One airline may have worse partner availability but better own-plane availability, and another vice versa.)

Second, you need to explain which class you want tickets in, and how many together. It's a lot easier in general to get one award ticket per plane than to get more, and the difficulty grows with the number of seats. But agian this could vary from airline to airline, even from destination to destination! And some airlines have better avialability in coach, while others may have better availabliy up front.

Third, availability can vary a lot by destination, and also by date, for the same airline. But the destination that are hard for airline might be easy for another (based on the hub they connect through, etc). Thus without more specifics, it's even harder to generalize.

Finally, things are about to change fast. OpenSkies was just adopted for Europe, and airlines in Europe starting next year will no longer be restricted to hubbing only in their home country. By the time you save up for an award, BA might be offering flights from France or Germany, Lufthansa from England or Spain, KLM from Germany or Ireland. Who knows? (And new routes often have the best availability!)

Meanwhile, Delta is going through a rash of European expansion right now (with its own planes). Again, new routes often have the best availability, but if they're expanding now and you have to save up those miles for a year or two, they won't be new by then.

Lastly, remember the every airline has good availability, as long as you're willing pay double the miles ("standard" awards)! What has limited availability is simply the "saver" awards, which are restricted more or less like restricted deep discount fares are...

Thanks for the reply. Let me elaborate a little more.

I am only looking for availability in the saver type awards with the minumum miles. The "standard" rewards aren't that great, and I won't accumulate enough miles in the near term to use them.

Thanks again,
Eric

Narrow it down to 3 alliances..

AA and OW(Europe) = AA, BA, AY, IB, MA
AAdvantage = all of the above plus Turkish, Air Tahiti Nui to Paris, Aer Lingus and Brussles Airlines.

That's a fair point- I don't know the specifics of the AA programme.

If the OP is from ATL, there is a lot of Skyteam activity out of ATL due to DL's presence there, though many of the flights will be either DL or DL-operated codeshares (for example the Alitalia flights between ATL and Italy are all operated by Delta). ATL to AMS or CDG should be doable, though.

However, IMHO, an economy-class award ticket between Europe and N. America is very poor use of miles.
Award tickets should only be used on flights where lack of competition is keeping prices high (extreme example being AKL-SCL flights), the destination/routing is too complex to reach on a reasonably-priced paid ticket (e.g. going from MOW to EZE with a stopover at PTY), or the difference between economy and business is a lot smaller in miles than it is in money (example: CDG-MEX and back cheapest nonstop in Y �545+, cheapest nonstop in C �2691+, 50000 miles for Y, 80000 miles for C).
Economy tickets between the US and Europe are very very cheap- you can fly round-trip across the pond for under �500 all in, and that's just a cheap Y ticket, not a super-duper sale fare.
What I would advise the OP to do is to look for an FFP that would allow him to use his miles to upgrade to business class (though I do have a feeling that prices for these tickets are sliding down fast, too- there's a sale on now and you can fly Continental EWR-Europe-EWR in business for the princely sum of $1000!).
I know that BA (OW) and BD (*A) offer some variations on the Miles for Upgrades theme, but I am not sure of the exact terms and of who else offers it. I suggest the OP asks in the specific airline forum.

I fly often between europe and NA, and I usually find the most options on Skyteam partners. Between Delta, NW and CO on one side of the atlantic, and KLM, AF, Czech, Al-italia, Aeroflot (and I'm probably missing someone) there are many different routes... although it can take some persistence with the agent, I'm usually able to find something. The fact that you're based in Atlanta makes Skyteam an even stronger option...

Well, therein's the rub: You are trying to fly from a domestic hub, which is far from the biggest city in the country (though it may be the biggest city in your region), and meanwhile until OpenSkies takes hold, the nonstop/direct flights to almost every country in Europe from ATL are going to be on a different carrier! If anyone, it'll be KLM (part of SkyTeam) to AMS, AF (co-owned with KLM and so also SkyTeam) to CDG, LH (part of Star Alliance) to FRA, BA (part of OneWorld, but you can't earn or redeem AA miles on flying BA ATL-UK, even though AA doesn't fly direct ATL-UK!) or Bmi (part of Star Alliance) or VS (part of nothing) to LHR/LGW, etc.

So if you want to stick to one Alliance, and yet not fly the airline that dominates your home airport, you have to limit yourself to landing in just a few European countries, at least until OpenSkies.

Now, OpenSkies may change that, but (a) it's too soon to know how, and (b) even when the changes start being announced, it's hard to know how long they'll last (eg, if BA announces tomorrow that they'll fly ATL-CDG, and they start that next year, but you're planning for 2009 awards, they may drop that route by then if it doesn't work out for them during 2008!).

And just because someone flies ATL-Eur doesn't mean it'll be easy to get those awards direct. Again, sometimes awards are only easy to get with alternate routing, which of course means non-direct! (Though one ticket in economy booked 330 days out -- which is when the seat first is made available -- might not be so hard. However, you've already missed that deadline for everything next year you mentioned except maybe early fall.)

Finally, one ticket in coach doesn't necessarily cost that much $$$ if you just book far ahead of time and/or during sales, especially for late spring or early fall! (And you may have to book mileage awards at least that far ahead!) So how much work is it worth to try to earn miles (that you may or may not be able to redeem) just to redeem them for something you could have bought cheaply in cash? (And if you buy in cash, you're no longer locked into one carrier, you can choose among all carriers who have direct flights to Europe from ATL, which you can't if you're trying to redeem miles.)

Btw, I hope you realize that when you book a coach award (or a paid ticket) on a partner, it means a normal coach seat. (There may exceptions, but generally on partners you can't book things like exit row or bulkhead seats, even if your status lets you do that on your domestic airline. So consider whether an "ordinary" seat on a Delta partner would be better, if on Delta you could get at least reserve an exit row or bulkhead seat?)

This is certainly a value judgment, but it strikes me as foolish to be in Atlanta and discount DL (and the SkyTeam alliance). Delta's the hometown airline in the world's largest airport hub. DL is the #1 carrier across the Atlantic (although I'm not sure if that's number of flights rather than # of seats or revenue passenger miles).

The OP should ask himself why he wants to fly a foreign carrier. Really think that Iberia, AF or Alitalia (Ha!) is better than Delta in coach?

The frequency and diversity of flights from ATL plus the expansion of international service from JFK makes this an easy choice.