Which airline has the best reward seat availability?
If you’ve got airline reward points collecting dust because you haven't been able to find any seats available, maybe you’re a member of the wrong rewards program altogether. A company called IdeaWorks has been untangling airline rewards for the past six years, and the company's latest study names and shames the programs with the most and the least reward-seat availability.
For its Switchfly Reward Seat Availabiity Survey, IdeaWorks attempted to book travel on 280 specific dates per airline to test seat availability using only reward points. Each booking in the test included a Saturday night stay and was based on two travelers flying together.
In order to find out just how flexible airline rewards programs are when it comes to seat availability, in March of this year IdeaWorks made a total of 7,000 booking queries, with travel dates ranging from June to October of 2015, on the websites of 25 frequent-flier programs.
Among airlines in the United States, Southwest took top honors, tying with German low-cost carrier airberlin – both with 100% reward seat availability for the dates tested. Southwest also came out on top for least amount of points required for a rewards ticket among North American airlines, averaging 9,400 points for a trip ranging between 250 and 2,500 miles. Delta was the lowest ranking U.S. airline when it comes to availability, with only 57.9% of the dates tested available, and American Airlines required the most points -- 27,393 -- for short-haul trips.
The survey is not without its detractors though. Travel expert Gary Leff from View from the Wing says the study is fatally flawed for a host of reasons – it ignores the cost of acquiring those miles, the value of the redemption, fuel surcharges, and high and low season, among other factors.
“The results are dead wrong, because the methodology is dead wrong. In fact, consumers will be worse off if they pay any attention to it.”
So which airline rewards program is actually the best? That’s going to depend on a number of factors, but most importantly it depends on whatever works specifically for you. Participation in any rewards program is better than none at all, and generally speaking frequent fliers who take part in a rewards program report they are significantly happier with airlines than those that do not.
In the meantime, while you wade through all the choices, check out some tips to keep those reward points from expiring for those rewards you already have.
Top 10 Overall Reward Availability