Blog research compares & contrasts ease of frequent flier mileage redemption
Do frequent flier programs frustrate or even anger you? They do most of us. We rack up miles in order to get free flights or perhaps upgrades. And what happens when we try? We thought we’d be able to redeem 25,000 or 30,000 points for a roundtrip and end up “spending” 40,000 or 50,000. We can’t fly on the day and/or time we’d like. Instead of a convient nonstop, we get routed using an inconvenient change or planes. Are things as bad as we think? Frequent Flier that follows airline antics and even issues a weekly newsletter did some comparing.
“Which Airline Programs are the Most (and Least) Generous,” asks the Frequent Flier blog rhetorically. The short answer is this list of domestic carrier (ease of redemption with change from last year in parentheses):
- Southwest – 99.3 percent (No change)
- Air Canada – 82.1 percent (-11.5 points)
- JetBlue – 79.3 percent (New for 2011)
- United – 71.4 percent (+2.8 points)
- Continental – 71.4 percent (No change)
- Alaska – 64.3 percent (-10.7 points)
- American – 62.9 percent (+5 points)
- AirTran – 47.1 percent (-20.8 points)
- Delta – 27.1 percent (+14.2 points)
- US Airways – 25.7 percent (+15 points)
Read the entire post for methodology and caveats. It doesn’t surprise me that Southwest tops this list as it does so many others.
