There's no denying the trip took a lot of thought (and just
a few seat availability searches!)
Not exact matches
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FEWER RESTRICTIONS: Unlike programs offered by legacy carriers where
seat availability is murky at best, Rapid Rewards members will be able to redeem their points for every
seat on every flight with no blackout dates or
seat restrictions.
So the results of a recent study by consulting firm IdeaWorks, which ranks airlines by award
availability should come as no surprise — it shows that Delta ranked last (23rd out of 23) with the
fewest low - level award
seats available based on the nearly 7,000 queries it conducted.
British Airways guarantees that it will release at least 2 Business Class
seats on every flight so, as this route has just be loaded in the past
few hours, award
availability should be plentiful right now....
In general, award
availability to Florence from the U.S. is good when using American and United miles, but there are
fewer seats available when booking with Delta miles.
The Virgin Atlantic Dreamliner has
fewer Premium Economy and Upper Class
seats than both the A330 and A340 aircraft so I suspect this won't do much for award
availability on this route.
United Airlines may not have many cabins that one would call aspirational (The latest Polaris
seats on the 777 - 300ER are nice but there's hardly any of them in service) but it offers far better award
availability than American Airlines and requires considerably
fewer miles for premium cabin awards than Delta — that makes it a valuable transfer option to have.
In the last
few days, I was trying to find the trend on Etihad award
seat availability.
The problem Cathay Pacific is experiencing is high demand for its first class award
seats from those with AAdvantage miles, with these
seats often booked soon after the award calendar opens, leaving no award
availability for its own Asia Miles frequent flyer members who may seek to book just a
few months before the date of departure.
Saver awards require
fewer miles but have limited
availability and come with more restrictive fare conditions; Advantage awards require more miles as there are more
seats available and have less restrictive fare conditions.
The headline here is that there will be 9
fewer business class
seats available, which means there won't be quite the award
availability you may have hoped on the new planes.
Southwest is one of the
few domestic airlines that offer the same
seating availability whether you're paying with points or dollars.
Their short hops beyond Riyadh and Jeddah can have
fewer seats open, but
availability is still good.
Overall trends: As I mention above, you'll be hard - pressed to find business class award
availability on Air France, though I was able to find a
few seats here and there.