Here is a link from
WebFlyer
that compares the ease of redemption of different frequent flyer programs.
January 2002, Northwest Airlines announced (with much fanfare) that black-out dates
would be eliminated from their WorldPerks award program for 2002 and beyond. Most
of the other major airlines followed suit in this game of "liar's poker"
and the media heralded the announcements. Northwest's press release cautioned
that "award seat availability during peak travel periods will be
limited" and told travelers to "allow flexibility in dates,
flights and alternate airports." Prior to January
2002, the black-out dates for domestic travel for 2002 had been: November 27, December 1, 2, 20, 21,
27, 28 & 29. Bottom line on the old program: Thanksgiving and Christmas were
unavailable without spending double the miles to lift the capacity
restrictions.
Northwest said that seats would be available for booking on March 1,
2002.
Being skeptical, I decided to test Northwest to see if it was possible to
reserve two seats in coach from Detroit (my home and Northwest's biggest hub) to
ten of the most and least* popular domestic destinations over the two
vacation periods (twenty trips total) of previously blacked-out days. I
chose coach seats
because you can always spend more miles for first class. I fired-up my PC
at midnight (central time) on March 1st and started to surf for WorldPerks
seats. Northwest's headquarters is in Minneapolis (Central time zone)
and they post new inventory at that time (confirmed by an agent). I wanted first shot at what
they were offering.
The tests took them at their word, the worst case scenario: flying from Detroit to each destination for Thanksgiving on November
27th and
returning on either December 1st or 2nd. Then
a Christmas trip leaving on either
December 20th or 21st and returning
on December 27th, 28th
or 29th. The chart below shows:
were two seats available in each direction on a non-stop flight, the number of total non-stop
seats in both directions that Northwest has on that date(s), the total number of non-stop
flights in both directions for the date(s), was a trip possible by making no more than one
connection in either direction (as a last ditch
effort)? The number of flights
can be an odd number because NW may have a different number of flights
outbound than returning. If there were no non-stop seats available for
either the outbound or the return, the trip could not be made unless
connections were possible (last column).
Follow-up:
The original test was conducted on March 1,
2002.
March 14, 21, 28, May 14, June 20, 2002: success to Toledo, Buffalo &
Cleveland for both trips
April 24: success to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Denver for Christmas
(it pays to keep trying).
September 1st: seats still available to Cleveland and Toledo but no where
else (not even Buffalo).
November 5th: seats available over Thanksgiving to Cleveland; seats
available over Christmas to Cleveland and Toledo.
December 11th: seats for Christmas to Cleveland.
Conclusion:
Excessive marketing hype. Did you really think they would give seats away to
the places people want to go at this time of the year? See my travel
tip about how to have frequent flyer seats made available for you if
you're a full-fare traveler. If you decide which airline to use based
upon their frequent flyer program, remember that they don't do you any good
if you can't redeem them. There is an excellent web site that
discusses all of the frequent flyer programs: FlyerTalk.
The Northwest press releases stated that seats would be released
on March 1st. I spoke with a NW reservation agent
(on 3/1 at 12:15 AM) and was told that seats were actually available on February 28th at 2:30 PM
(eastern). Did NW have any seats available and if so, did the
employees tell their friends? Were there any seats to begin with and
who got them? I doubt the general public got any unless they happened
to be lucky.
Remember that just because the seats you wanted were not available at
this time, there are thousands of fare changes per day and more seats could
be released at any time if the airlines have un-sold inventory. So
it's worth while to continue to check. However, if there are no low
priced seats available for purchase, you're chances of getting a free seat
are very low.
This study looked only at Northwest. It is not fair nor accurate to
assume that other airlines will have a similar number of award seats
available. However, I suspect that most airlines have similar capacity
limits. Some airlines don't have a
frequent flyer program but offer much lower prices.
What's the answer? (two suggestions)
I think airlines should be required to publish a monthly table much like those above.
Tell us how many seats between each city-pair they offered and how many were used by frequent flyers who did not spend extra
miles to waive capacity restrictions. I'd also like to see how many
seats were used using extra miles. Doing this with a hub & spoke
network should be fairly simple and I suspect this information has been in
use by the airlines for years. This data could be downloaded
into a web server. Some enterprising organization will then allow you to
find out how many frequent flyer seats were used between June 10 and 17, 2001 (or any date, week, month) between Detroit and any
city (directly or via a connection) on any airline. This is what I
call "Full Disclosure."
Orbitz allows you to monitor price changes
through their DealDetector. DealDetector should have the ability to
watch for frequent flyer seat availability on any or all airlines. If the airlines do not provide this information to Orbitz, they should be required to do so even if you can not
reserve a seat via their systems. If the airlines really wanted to make it
easy for us to find frequent flyer seats, they should allow you to set up
a Deal Detector for frequent flyer seats directly on their web
sites.
The results of these recommendations should be very revealing and
educational. I challenge the airline industry to immediately
implement them.
Other factors to consider:
What did you pay to get the airline miles that you're
spending? Terry Trippler
has done some excellent work examining the actual cost of your
"free" ticket. A free ticket may be very expensive,
especially if you spend extra miles to waive capacity
restrictions. Look at the true cost before you get addicted to the opiate
of frequent flyer miles.
Methodology:
The total number of seats was determined by
taking the number of flights, the aircraft types and the number of coach
seats that Northwest (and Continental to Cleveland) lists per aircraft type on their web site.
Northwest and Continental have different versions of some aircraft types (DC-9s, 757, DC-10,
747, ERJ, Saab 340) and I took the average of each aircraft type. The
number of scheduled flights and equipment for the dates of travel were
inventoried on February 17, 2002. All airlines change their schedules
often so it pays to keep checking.
| Aircraft type |
Number of
coach seats |
| 747 |
338 |
| DC-10 |
247 |
| 757 |
160 |
| 727 |
137 |
| A320 |
132 |
| A319 |
108 |
| DC-9 |
96 |
| ARJ-85 |
53 |
| CRJ |
50 |
| ERJ 135/145 (Continental) |
43 |
| Saab 340 |
32 |
*No offence to the fine folks of Toledo, Buffalo and
Cleveland. I've visited their cities often and would not want to incur
their wrath.
