Up to 10% of Passengers Fly For Free!
There are currently more ways than ever before to accumulate frequent flyer miles and points. Airlines have dedicated a plentiful amount of time and effort into expanding their network of partners - and now virtually any business can buy and resell miles from the airlines; from Chase Manhattan to the mom-and-pop florist down the street.
However, when it comes to actually putting those hard-earned miles to use, it’s a common perception among travelers that the airlines are trying harder than ever to make it impossible to redeem them for seats in a plane.
Even to ‘industry insiders’ the strategy behind award seating designation remains a mystery at best. Although we know that airlines generally release award seats 330 days prior to departure, we have no idea at what point they withdraw them from public consumption and how they decide when to reissue them based on demand, cancellations and excess inventory.
Fortunately the airlines are mandated to provide some level of aggregate award data to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Department in their annual 10-K reports. Although they don’t divulge the number of seats they make available for award redemptions, they usually provide the percentage of passengers who flew on awards. The information from last year is pretty compelling and provides proof that the airlines aren’t nearly as tightfisted with their award seats as one might imagine.
American Airlines reported that 3.1 million miles were used in 2008 for award travel, or about 9.7% of the total number of passengers flown. This is the single highest number of awards to be given out by any airline in the long history of frequent flyer programs! Put another way, approximately 1 out of 10 American Airlines passengers in 2008 was flying on miles – and this doesn’t include upgrades or award tickets issued with partner airlines.
United Airlines Mileage Plus passengers redeemed 2.3 million miles last year, which accounted for 9.1% of total passengers flown. Continental issued 1.6 million miles to members, representing a 6.6% increase from 2007 and 8.5% of passengers flown. All of the legacy airlines increased their award redemptions in 2008, and not a single airline saw their redemptions decrease. The low-cost carriers issued less awards as an overall percentage of passengers, but this could be in part due to the fact that their loyalty programs are much younger and don’t have quite the reach that a loyalty program like AAdvantage can boast (that, by the way, issued 196 BILLION miles miles last year, half of which went to partners like credit cards).
My beautiful chart below illustrates the percentage of passengers flying on awards in 2007 and 2008 for each reporting airline. It may come as a shock to you how many people were actually flying for free last year! I think this demonstrates that although awards are out there, it’s still awfully hard for the average frequent flyer to obtain them. It takes persistence, planning, and a lot of patience. And with the economy in the gutter, people are even more desperate to put those miles to use. We know TravelFli will be a huge help to all the travelers out there with this problem, but until then keep your head up and remember that there are awards to be had - you just gotta be smarter than the next guy to get them!
***Thanks to the folks at InsideFlyer for compiling a lot of this info in the April, 2009 issue.
