Racking up miles on airlines isn’t hard and some make it a lot easier than others. However, if they are too easy to earn it may be because they are a lot harder to redeem. A new survey from The Consumerist looked at many of the top airlines to find which are most likely to have seats available for reward travel.
Southwest Airlines was the top reward program for US airlines and actually tied for #1 in the world with Air Berlin with 100% of travel dates showing at least two open rewards seats.
The second best in US was AirTran which tied with United Airways. They have both improved significantly over the last year in rewards availability. Their availability was 87.1% which is very good. JetBlue was close behind with an 86.4% rating.
The Rest:
US Airways: 33.6%
Delta: 27.1%
Delta SkyMiles are so easy to earn I don’t even mind that they are this low. People love to hate on Delta but in reality if you know how to work their (often broken) rewards search engine you can get some solid deals. This applies to any airline. Don’t be afraid to be loyal to the airline that works best for you. No matter what you are going to get some good deals in the end.
You can check out the entire report, which includes several international carriers, HERE [PDF].
