5 key findings from Consumer Report on frequent flyer programs

NOTE: Be sure to click here to see all recent TravelSkills posts about: United’s new 50,000 mile bonus + Easy 1,000 AAdvantage miles + Starwood-InterContinental merger? + Delta bumps up summer seats to Europe! 

Which airline frequent flyer programs are the most (and least) generous with reward seats for their members?

Consumer Reports magazine conducted a detailed analysis of free seat availability on the five largest airlines (Delta, American, United, Southwest and JetBlue) over the past two years.

Briefly: Southwest is the most generous with awards, JetBlue the least. New York is the most popular destination for award trips. All airlines except United increased award seat availability last year. JetBlue awards are the most valuable. Don’t rely on what you see online– call an agent to check award availability. And buying miles is always a bad idea.

Mores details among the findings:

• Southwest Airlines made 11.5 percent of its seats — a total of 11.9 million — available for award travel on hundreds of routes. That’s the highest among the five airlines. Among the 25 most popular reward routes, Southwest had the highest percentage of award seat availability on 72 percent of them. By contrast, JetBlue ranked last of the five with only 4.5 percent of its seats, or 892,000, available for reward trips. Delta set aside 5.6 million U.S. award seats, followed by United with 5 million and American with 3.5 million.

• The top five domestic award travel destinations, and the airline with the highest percentage of available seats, were New York City (Southwest at 12.8 percent), Los Angeles (Delta at 11.7 percent), Las Vegas (Southwest at 10 percent), Miami (Southwest at 13.7 percent) and Orlando (Southwest at 9.3 percent).

New: United’s sweet 50,000-mile bonus is back

• Although everyone talks about award seats being harder than ever to find, Consumer Reports determined that the number of one-way award trips flown by the five airlines in fiscal 2014 was 26.9 million, an increase of almost 3 million from the previous year. All the airlines increased award travel last year except United, which cut it from 10.2 percent to 9.8 percent of all tickets.

• In assessing whether or not award seats represented a good value compared with the lowest fares available in a given market, the report found that JetBlue awards represented good value on all its routes, but it only serves 10 of the top 25; Southwest had good award seat value on 88 percent of its routes vs. 60 percent for United, 38 percent on Delta and 36 percent on American.

• The magazine suggested that frequent flyer members should not buy extra miles to top off their accounts when that option is available. “They cost about 3 cents per mile, clearly a losing proposition. Instead, use the miles you do have to buy a one-way ticket covering half of your round trip, which all big five airlines now allow.”

The full report is a whopper– check it out here. 

How do your own experiences in finding award seats compare with the Consumer Reports findings? Post comments below. 

NOTE: Be sure to click here to see all recent TravelSkills posts about: United’s new 50,000 mile bonus + Easy 1,000 AAdvantage miles + Starwood-InterContinental merger? + Delta bumps up summer seats to Europe!