UA and AA: the best for award availability
January 5th, 2009Thanks to the free flowing credit card promo offers, in the past year I've had miles "to burn" on almost all the major carriers. And because the miles are easier to obtain (what's another credit card application? :) ), I've been more willing to use them on trips I might otherwise have paid for. Like domestic trips to obscure U.S. airports. Ever want to fly to Jackson Hole? It can cost a fortune. But standard award tickets are generally plentiful on UA and AA (and not plentiful on, say, DL).
And mind you, "partner" airlines don't work. It's a bear, for example, to find free seats on UA using US miles. The "bucket" is completely different, and availability is far worse.
Mind you, my experience is mostly planning award travel in advance, like between 2 months and 6 months before departure. It's also mostly looking for coach awards. The "last minute" picture may be quite different, as might be FC travel. But if you can plan in advance, and will take coach, the difference is dramatic. For a trip to transcon trip to Fresno, for example, UA had about 8 possible connections available at standard reward levels. DL? Zero. On a trip to the Caribbean, AA had almost any flight I wanted. DL had zero availability for weeks.
As you probably can guess, I'd rank DL the worse for reward availability, and I'd put US and CO only slightly better (I don't have enough experience with NW's program -- they're availability through CO and DL tends to be pretty poor, however). But the main difference is between AA and UA and everyone else.
I'd love to see some "intelligent" research be done in this area. I'd be very surprised if a carefully done study differed from my anecdotal (but extensive) experience.
Accordingly, I tend to value my AA and UA miles more than those in the other programs. Indeed, I seek out AA and UA credit card offers to build my account balances there because I know those miles have actual VALUE. They're a "real currency," unlike DL's Skymiles, which I basically consider "funny money" (I had to plan 330 days in advance to burn my otherwise "unusable" DL miles to get an award ticket to Hawaii.
I would like to see AA and UA publicly acknowledged for their efforts to make reward seats available. Indeed, if it were practicable, it might be a good idea to require the airlines to report their ff availability, so they might be more inclined to compete in this area. Right now, in this era of high load factors, I think there is too much incentive to try to sell every last seat, and leave the frequent flyers high and dry for award availability.
As a non-UA elite, I agree with you: the overall "experience" in booking UA award travel can be unsatisfactory. I recently had a problem with a UA-partner cancelling my award travel flights, and just finding a competent customer service representative to understand the problem and rebook me was frustrating.
But that said, getting back to my original point, it seems that most flyertalkers agree with me that AA and UA are better than the competition in making standard award seats available. It would be my hope that they will someday be recognized for this achievement. As we all know, miles you can't actually use at standard reward levels aren't worth much.
As far as the overall customer experience goes in booking award travel, I'd have to give the nod to AA, because they have an almost entirely US-based reservation staff. As we all know, it's a rare award trip that can be handled entirely over the internet, and being able to reach a competent rez agent is invaluable in the process. I am not being xenophobic when I say that the typical US-based rez agent is significantly better at booking award travel than an outsourced, foreign agent.
Since UA outsources a significant percentage of their rez center staff, they earn a demerit in this regard. In many respects, DL offers the worst of both worlds: poor availability and foreign rez agents. For the non-flyertalker (aka, the vast majority of the public not familiar with the tricks of the ff trade), that would be a toxic combination.
I can usually find availability on UA when I need it, except for the obvious times of the year when flights are full.
"The data can be misleading," said Mr. Petersen, founder of InsideFlyer.com. He'd like to see more data, including numbers on how many customers made requests but couldn't find seats.
Of course, what would be really meaningful would be a promise of at least X seats per flight in each class. But airlines will be loathe to do that absent congressional action. :rolleyes:
As for personal observations, I would for the most part agree with GUWonder. I have had little trouble booking free trips on AA or UA; however the rest including US lag far behind.
A couple of years ago I tried to book a free coach trip on US from SFO to PIT to do a midwest baseball stadium tour. Now PIT is not exactly Maui or Europe, and my dates were flexible. Lo and behold there were zero flights available (incl. redeye). Not a single seat on a single day in July or August. :mad: Basically US customers in SFO were unable to to book a free trip during those months to a US hub (even tried going through CLT or PHL). So I would have to rank US near the bottom, though on occasion you can find *A awards via UA.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116528094651740654-search.html?KEYWORDS=mccartney+airlines&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month
If anyone who is not a WSJ subscriber is dying to read the (inconclusive!) story, drop me a line with an email address, as I'm allowed to send email copies out.
I'm surprised this issue hasn't gotten more attention. Being able to actually find seats when you need them makes the awards significantly more valuable. I've had situations with the "lesser carriers" where they've offered $99 (or less!) transcons and not had seats on the same flights available for standard reward travel. That's idiotic.
I've had trouble in the past with UA's availability during ski season.
It never hurts to have miles and points on many programs. None of them is superior.
I do like the Star Alliance hubs in Europe more than Oneworld's. VIE, WAW, FRA, MUC, OSL, and LIS make it relatively easy to always find some availability. I use my miles for business or first class tickets that I couldn't afford to buy with cash. I would rather fly many foreign carriers in J or F before either AA or UA in J or F, and I usually have good luck finding space on LH.
However, I value US miles a little more than UA miles. If I go to Australia, I'll try to fly either NZ or QF, both of which I can get using US miles. Also, if you want to go to Asia but can't find *A availability over the Pacific, US will let you fly via Europe for a small premium (15K for business class). That gives one a lot more options.
All in all, I like having a bunch of miles in a bunch of programs. I just booked IAD-FRA-VIE,VIE-FRA-MLA,MLA-FRA-MUC(stop for 21 hours),MUC-IAD for New Year's using US miles. That worked out great because my GF needs to start in DFW and end in IAD, so she was able to get DFW-FRA-VIE,VIE-FRA-MLA,MLA-FRA-MUC,MUC-IAD,IAD-DFW and she'll just skip the IAD-DFW segment. Oneworld does not have any flights from Europe to WAS that can be had using AA miles, so the GF would not have been able to leave from DFW and return to IAD using AA miles.
1) AA
2) WN
3) UA
4) DL
5) US
6) NW
7) CO*
*Limited experience.
In general, I agree with AA and UA near the top (no experience with WN). DL has been poor in my experience. US was good until the merger, now they are near the bottom and may be challenging CO for last. Here is my list:
1) AA
2) UA
3) NW
4) DL
5) US
6) CO
WN is obviously an important carrier, and the principal reason I excluded them is that data is hard to come by since their recent conversion from an "any available seat" to a "limited availability" award system. They also only allow folks who have already qualified for an award ticket to search award inventory (I won't qualify for my first "new" WN award ticket until next month, so I've never been able to search). The anecdotal (and preliminary) information from the WN board would suggest domestic availability is at least as good as AA's or UA's.
That said, there are obviously some significant limitations in WN's program over those offered by these other carriers. The biggest limitations are that you only get 2 years to earn your tickets and, once you do, the redemption clock starts ticking: 12-months "use it or lose it." Given these limitations -- which obviously limit the number of free tickets out there -- it would be pretty shocking if WN didn't offer better-than-average availability.
I find that it's easier to find award availability on SQ using UA miles than on CX using AA miles in business class. In fact, one can even find award availability on SQ in first, especially on the LAX-NRT route.
I've noticed that CX has tightened up award availability quite a bit over the past year.
I agree UA to Asia is an excellent value.
But I have redeemed AA miles for CX F about 3 times, and CX J another time when I couldn't get F. All California-HKG-XXX Every time booked about 1 week in advance. That makes a big difference avail wise.
I was one of these, but this is misleading since I always have to use double miles.
I lump them together mostly because the regular award availability space (i.e., excluding the possible extra availability space given to elites) is mostly shared amongst those carriers.
UA & US/HP don't seem to mirror award space availability on the other partner airline as closely as DL, NW & CO do for one another.
Any flight that has a seat for sale (even Y1) can be used for double miles on AA - so essentially if you are willing to spend more miles, you can get any flight you want.
This is not the same on UA?
That said, everything I've heard is that WN redemptions are still reasonably fair - after the program change. I haven't earned any awards since the change so I don't really know. Domestic awards are kind of an afterthought to me, although I always liked having a WN segment or two lying around for a last-minute award.
Definitely agree with that re: UA. I don't know if it affects the specific topic at hand - award availability - except at the very top level (1K), but throughout the entire UA customer service experience, they go out of their way to make non-elites' lives difficult. As a 1P now, I have a pretty positive experience, but I sure hope I never fully cycle out of UA status. As much as I enjoy the status, I'm not sure I'd go through that 25,000-mile grind to reacquire 2P. I see how non-elites are treated and it sucks.
Right, the data says that.
But there's something screwy about the data, because it is generally much more difficult to find Skymiles award seats. Everyone's individual experiences are anecdotal, but try it yourself: take a domestic city pair a few months in advance and try it on Delta and United. See what happens.
The only thing I can think of is that more people are trying to book award travel on Delta, or are willing to pay more miles for the awards.
It's also possible that Delta is better at making seats available close to departure time. As I indicated, I generally book award travel months in advance.
I've been elite with four airlines. First with US, then TWA, then AA, and now I'm gold with Delta. First and foremost in today's system, elite status produces availability. When I went from no status with DL just two years ago to gold now, I went from very difficult to redeem to pretty easy.
The OP raises the question who is best if all things were equal. That's just not possible to answer. It depends on your home airport, where you fly, what time of the year, and status. However I can rate my experience with the airlines as a non elite member for each. To do this I will exclude my recent DL gold experience and rely on 2004 and older experience on them. I will also only use recent experience on Southwest since they changed to limited availability. This ranking is for availability to go anywhere in the USA domestic routes. International is very different since Southwest would not even be included.
My list is as follows:
1) AA
2) WN
3) UA
4) DL
5) US
6) NW
7) CO*
*Limited experience.
For some reason the OP ignored Southwest. They are becoming more and more important for non stop domestic service. My home airport is TPA and WN is number 1 there in departures by a wide margin over number 2 DL.
http://biz.yahoo.com/pz/061205/109893.html
If you could hoodwink anyone into believing this (did these folks TRY to redeem a ff award on DL lately?), there seems little incentive to actually offer reasonable award availability.
I fly both UA and AA. I think both are quite fair with award availability and the rules on awards. In my anecdotal experience, I have found UA easier to book to Europe and AA easier to book to Hawaii, Central/South America, and Canada. I find UA easier to book on regular domestics (e.g., MCI-DEN-West Coast), but AA easier if I need 4 award seats on the same flight.
AA has the a bit of an advantage in that one elite can book four travelers together on one itinerary and get assigned seats for all with no problems. As a UA 1P, I had to use my 3P assignment for my wife, and now when four of us travel we have to book it under two itins. Not a huge deal, but people who don't know this and goof it up by booking 4 together get no sympathy from UA whatsoever. It isn't well-explained...it's just something you learn by reading these boards and learning from others.
It's nice to have healthy balances in both. Both have their strengths/weaknesses.
I always had great experiences with US back in the '90's when I was a GP, but now I have about 60k left on them and haven't found any availability to use the miles when I've wanted to in recent years.
DL seems to be an odd bird in that I can always get international availability on them (including, last year, three 35k seats to Belize in max-peak season), but I have the most difficult time getting the simple MCI-ATL segments to clear, even on wide-open flights. Waitlist, waitlist, waitlist....hope they cleaer, usually they eventually do...but there's always this lingering fear that I'm going to be buying a last-minute AirTran ticket home.
CO is a wreck. I guess it's a good program if you want free train rides on Amtrak. ;)
I use NW for one reason: MCI-DTW runs (we have family there). Fares on this route are absurd, but 25k awards are usually not too hard to find. One of those rare domestic routes where all flights can be $450 R/T & up, but all of the cheap fare buckets (and awards) are wide open. I know little about the rest of the NW program.
In contrast, I probed Delta, and got next to no options for the same dates and adjacent ones as well. One outbound option they offered had me connecting in CVG and spending the night there at my own expense.
I also agree that AA is good, based on one recent experience.
The worst, IMHO? Got to be Northwest, hands down.
Yeah, my analysis doesn't include breadth of destinations (all of them now are pretty broad) or availability on partners. The latter would be difficult to compare, because nobody really has the majority of their partners on line.
As I did mention, however, most of the "alliance" airlines seem to have separate buckets for their own customers vs. their partners' customers. So good luck using your US miles on UA. Indeed, it was so bad for me that I had to go out and get a UA credit card to top off my UA account because I couldn't find availability on UA with my ample US miles.
And I really do think the #s we have seen are misleading.
Say I call AA once for a good redemption value and get it 1st try. Say I redeemed 25K for a $500 ticket.
Then I call DL for a similar ticket. Nothing. I repeat this five times over the coarse of the year. Nothing. Finally, I give up and use 25K DL miles for a $150 ticket to STL.
My DL miles are basically worth 1/3 my AA miles but the number would still look the same.
As for my experience (about 5 million miles in 10 different programs) I rank them as follows:
1. AA
2. UA
3. DL
4. US
5. NW
6. CO
-You can reserve and hold an award ticket
-You can get them to understand and assist with missing or late mile postings that would normally give you enough to fly said award (and I have had them front me some too!)
-They actually HAVE award seats on flights I use!
UA is ok but I have seen tons of glitches on their site, which I find to be the worst one for booking flights and more limited with creative itinerary options... Once I literally SAW it change/update 3 times when I was on it while trying to book an award with a friend who was on the phone also refreshing it so we could get the same itinerary. I find them to be a very class heavy airline. If you have status, you get priority. If not, see ya!
NWA is our choice for BOS-AMS as they fly direct. We have usually gotten the flight we need and if the site does not have it posted, you can call them up and they may even still have some seats even if you must pay that stupid $15 fee.
Looking at this from award rules flexibility, I'd place AA first, followed by DL (although DL is slipping a bit but not enough to make it worse than UA), then UA followed by NW/CO.
Overall, I rank AA's program better overall than the other major US carriers that fly intercontinental long-hauls. And While UA wasn't so far behind AA for my redemption purposes a few years ago, UA is now increasingly further behind AA for my redemption purposes. I'd say it's still:
1. AA
2. UA
3. US
4. DL
5. NW
6. CO
.... but, over time, the gap between AA and UA has widened while the gap between UA/US and DL/NW/CO has narrowed to the point where I'd say it's:
1. AA
with 2. UA as a distant second
with 3. US riding on UA's coat-tails
with 4-6 DL/NW/CO behind but gaining quickly on UA/US
For example: with UA, there are several widely-available tools/sites that allow you to easily look at award inventory (at least on UA metal). By the time I log in to United.com to actually redeem an award, I already know exactly what flights I'm getting. Even if it's an itin that requires a human agent, by the time I'm on the phone I already have all my data.
If these outside tools didn't exists, there are awards that would either be difficult or impossible to find doing a long series of United.com queries. So in my mind, the outside tools in and of themselves make UA award availability somewhat better.
I think similar tools exist for AA...not sure about the others. I'd be really interested to know if there are any good sites for querying partner award availability.
But there's something screwy about the data, because it is generally much more difficult to find Skymiles award seats. Everyone's individual experiences are anecdotal, but try it yourself: take a domestic city pair a few months in advance and try it on Delta and United. See what happens.
The only thing I can think of is that more people are trying to book award travel on Delta, or are willing to pay more miles for the awards.
It's also possible that Delta is better at making seats available close to departure time. As I indicated, I generally book award travel months in advance.
With the usual caveat that this is anecdotal, I think you are absolutely right on both accounts:
(1) Booking a domestic or Canadian itin months in advance, it appears to me to be far easier to book an award on UA than DL. Unless I'm flying to fly around a holiday, UA's whole schedule for the day will be pretty much available.
(2) DL seems to open up seats close to departure time. My DL awards have been int'l, and those pesky MCI-ATL segments - even off-peak flights that are less than 50% full - clear two or three weeks before departure.
It sounds like you agree with me: it's frickin' annoying.
I find that it's easier to find award availability on SQ using UA miles than on CX using AA miles in business class. In fact, one can even find award availability on SQ in first, especially on the LAX-NRT route.
I've noticed that CX has tightened up award availability quite a bit over the past year.
UA's business class award to Asia is an excellent deal at only 90,000 miles. And you get to mix and match some of the best airlines in the world including NH and SQ.
Considering that DL & AA gave away the most seats last year, I think lots of folks have tried and succeeded in redemption on DL.
personally i like NH and CX, mainly for their partners, and also CX's one-way awards.
Yup, my hunch is that UA is # 1 in availability (nudging out AA). It's close enough that I can't be 100% sure. I can be 100% sure that a flyer used to redeeming points on UA would be unhappy if he/she suddenly had to find availability on DL.
I'm surprised this issue hasn't gotten more attention. Being able to actually find seats when you need them makes the awards significantly more valuable. I've had situations with the "lesser carriers" where they've offered $99 (or less!) transcons and not had seats on the same flights available for standard reward travel. That's idiotic.
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