Frequent Flier Miles: Which Airlines Are Easiest To Redeem Awards?
An article this week on GetRichSlowly about frequent flier program basics mentioned a WSJ article that I’ve never seen about which airlines make it easiest for you to redeem your miles. The research was done by a consulting firm IdeaWorks Co, which looked for awards equivalent to a domestic roundtrip flight using 25,000 miles “saver” award level. Here are the results:
JetBlue (79%) and Southwest (99%) are tops for domestic carriers. Alaska, American, Continental, and United all had seats available at least 60% of the time or better. Delta and US Airways were at the bottom of the list, with flights up for grabs only 1 out of 4 tries. I’ve mentioned that my parents are served by Delta and I’ve definitely wrestled with them over award flights, and only by booking well ahead of time and being flexible we’ve still managed to get by.
I have no real loyalty towards any airline, which is why I still prefer the flexibility of the Starwood American Express card for racking up my miles and hotel points. I use it for hotels whenever I can, but also to top off my accounts when I finally reach an award I want to redeem. I’m glad there are articles like these to publicly shame airlines like Delta into improving their awards availability.
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One thing I have learned recently is that Delta releases a lot of low-level redemption seats weeks before departure. If one can hold out on booking, there is a chance of being able to secure that low-level seat at the last minute.
Not surprising that the top-rated US airlines such as United make it relatively difficult to earn miles without flying (or at least traveling) and the low-rated US airlines such as Delta and UselessAirways make it super easy to earn miles without ever stepping foot on a plane. Delta and USAirways both several years ago made moves that diluted the value of their loyalty miles so bad that they had to restructure their awards system because their miles weren’t worth anything anymore (everyone has them!).
Personally I think American has the most flexible redemption system because they also allow one-way redemptions, but that wasn’t accounted for in this study.
No surprise that Delta is the bottom of the barrel… their 3-tier award system is just a pain at times.
As for US airways, the only good way to use US Airways is on Star Alliance partners!