Getting easier to redeem awards?

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“Frequent flier program members may be surprised to hear this, but airlines as a group have become more generous with reward seat availability.” That’s the overriding conclusion from the 2015 IdeaWorks/Switchfly survey of reward seat availability on 25 airlines worldwide.

During March of this year, researchers requested saver-level award seats on hundreds of flights for travel from June through October, and found that they were available on 74 percent of them — a significant increase from 66 percent in 2010.  The increased availability was even found for long-haul flights on global network airlines.

The biggest jump in long-haul (2,500 miles or more) award seat availability from 2014 to 2015 was on Alaska Airlines — up almost 46 points to 62.9 percent of flights requested. United’s availability was 67.1 percent for 2015, up 2.9 points year over year, while American jumped 18.6 points to 55.7 percent. Delta’s low 31.4 percent availability for long-haul seats was still a 10 point gain over last year, the survey found.

Low-cost carriers again dominated the overall rankings. Southwest and Airberlin tied for first place, with award seats available for 100 percent of the flights requested; for JetBlue, the rate was 87.1 percent. Alaska’s overall availability was 80 percent, a jump of 21.4 points from last year.

The report notes that Delta’s new spending-based accrual this year is a worse deal for flyers on bargain fares than the old system. But it noted that “Delta did make amends last year by nicely boosting US domestic saver reward availability.” What’s more, Delta’s new 10,000-mile domestic one-way award “was found to be liberally available and represented more than 58 percent of Delta’s domestic reward results for the 2015 survey.”

Meanwhile, J.D. Power and Associates released its second annual ranking of customer satisfaction with airline loyalty programs, and Alaska Airlines again topped the list with a score of 759 (on a 1,000-point scale). JetBlue’s TrueBlue program ranked second at 758 points, followed by Southwest’s Rapid Rewards at 743.

The survey found that customers who select a loyalty program based on their study of online reviews showed significantly higher satisfaction (813 points) than those who sign up for a program based on “convenience of locations where they travel” (721).

Readers: Have your searches for award seat availability confirmed the findings of the above study? What was your experience?

NOTE: Be sure to click here to see all recent TravelSkills posts about: Delta’s first class sale + Chinese tourists on notice + Fast trains in Spain + United’s 787 Dreamliner plans + New Oneworld lounge at LAX +