Which airline has the best award availability?
This post will break down award availability for international flights overall, and compare different categories: Economy vs business class, last minute vs 11 months out, and to Europe, Asia and South America (most awards to Africa, and even the Middle East, are routed through Europe or east-Asia anyways).
The reason I use AA, United and Delta for the tests is obviously that they are the biggest frequent flyer programs in the US, the easiest miles to earn with credit cards in the US, because their websites are the most comprehensive, and they represent award availability for the 3 different alliances.
Important note:
This post shows online award availability, and in some cases important partners to certain regions do not show up online at all. For example AA.com does not show any of it’s Asian partners and this is the reason it shows 0% award availability in the Asia section, and therefore weighing down it’s total percentage.
According to DOC, AA has added 5 partners to AA.com! However, none are showing up on my routes, when I know there’s availability. I will update the post if/when it starts working.
For this reason, I start with data from domestic award availability, as it is much more comprehensive in showing all the award flights available to the program. And because it best indicates how much availability the airline itself releases.
Hopefully the data is interesting regardless, as it shows details about what has and when there is availability.
Best Domestic Award Availability
While AA was slightly ahead statistically, in my opinion, Delta is the clear winner… as I’ll explain.
For Domestic award availability, I measured four non-hub routes, and here are the results:
- AA – 81%
- DL – 68.5%
- UA – 49%
Holiday Travel
In the Holiday month of December, Delta and AA nearly had the same rate of 70%, and United 39%.
In December, AA and United experienced the biggest loss in availability – December as a whole had 20% fewer awards available than October.
Delta’s Prices Are Much Cheaper
Delta’s domestic economy prices averaged 3,000 miles lower than AA or United’s standard domestic price of 12,500 miles.
And while all the airline’s have non-saver awards for a higher cost, Delta had a couple of extra awards at an extra cost that averaged only a couple thousand more than United’s or AA’s prices.
In fact, one of the prices I did not count as Delta’s saver availability, and therefore not shown in the availability statistics above, was a month with 3 award tickets at 11,500 miles, instead of 8,500 miles. While that is the only time I did not count an award 12,500 or under in the availability, Delta consistently has additional award availability for a small extra cost.
Overall, Delta is the winner.
For 25% less, Delta still has consistent award availability, with options on 70% of the days looked at.
And, Delta has near the same level of availability during peak-travel times as AA.
However, for international travel… Delta doesn’t look so hot.
On the other hand, for transatlantic flights, AA business class is better and more reasonable than Delta.
UA is the surprising loser.
The Best & Worst International Award Availability
Similarly, I checked routes from hubs and non hubs to different international destinations: Rome, Zurich, Lima, Rio De Janeiro, Saigon, and Bali.
Overall award availability:
| AA | United | Delta | |
| Total | 43% | 57% | 21% |
| Economy Class | 44% | 77% | 26% |
| Business Class | 42% | 37% | 15% |
As mentioned, AA.com does not show Asian partners online and therefore did not show any awards to Asia. This does not mean there are not bookable tickets, as you can still call to book Cathay and JAL flights.
However, if you excluded those Asian routes, AA would have the best overall availability with 65%.
Comparing booking the next month vs 11 months out:
| AA | United | Delta | |
| Last Minute Total | 31% | 59% | 7% |
| Economy (last minute) | 33% | 78% | 11% |
| Business (last minute) | 29% | 41% | 3% |
| 11 months out Total | 55% | 55% | 34% |
| Economy (11 mo.) | 56% | 76% | 41% |
| Business (11 mo.) | 55% | 33% | 27% |
Breaking down award availability to Europe:
| Europe: | AA | United | Delta |
| Total | 62% | 48% | 5% |
| Economy | 73% | 78% | 10% |
| Business Class | 51% | 18% | 1% |
| Last Minute | 33% | 48% | 0% |
| 11 Months Out | 92% | 48% | 11% |
Breaking down award availability to South America:
| South America: | AA | United | Delta |
| Total | 67% | 70% | 21% |
| Economy | 59% | 79% | 27% |
| Business Class | 75% | 62% | 15% |
| Last Minute | 60% | 83% | 0% |
| 11 Months Out | 74% | 58% | 42% |
Breaking down award availability to Asia:
| Asia: | AA | United | Delta |
| Total | 0% | 53% | 36% |
| Economy | 0% | 74% | 42% |
| Business Class | 0% | 31% | 30% |
| Last Minute | 0% | 48% | 22% |
| 11 Months Out | 0% | 58% | 50% |
Again, I’ll update this again when AA.com actually starts showing Cathay award availability.
Conclusions
Overall conclusions from International Award Availability:
- AA has the best business class availability, even without important partners (LATAM and Cathay).
- In fact, AA had better business class availability than economy to South America (not including LATAM).
- United has way better economy than business class.
- In general, AA has way better availability booking in advance than last minute.
- United has the best last minute availability but charges a $75 “close-in fee” for bookings within 21 days.
- Delta has terrible award availability to Europe.
Notes On International Award Availability by airline:
Delta
- Delta was horrific to Europe. Terrible.
- Delta was 60 out of 60 to Asia from a hub (LAX to Bali), and terrible to/from non hubs (LAS to Saigon).
And let’s not forget that Delta has great domestic prices and availability.
United
- United had great economy availability, especially economy last minute.
AA
I feel AA is at the biggest disadvantage in this test, as LAN is the biggest airline in South America and it’s award availability does not show up on AA.com. And again, they missed out bigly on Asia until Cathay starts showing up.
- AA had the best award availability if we don’t include Asia.
- Even with LAN/LATAM (the biggest South American airline) AA’s online award availability was still the best.
- AA had the best Europe availability.
- AA still had the best business class availability.
- AA still had the best advance availability.
My assumption is that if/when all partners were to show up, AA would blow everyone out of the water.
It’s also worth noting that AA had the best domestic award availability. Delta may have had better prices, but for international award redemption (which is how I use my miles), but AA having better domestic award availability actually helps AA have better international award availability for the average person…
See, the average person does not happen to live in a hub of the airline with whom they’re using miles, therefore they need to connect. However, if the first domestic flight doesn’t have award availability, then the entire flight won’t show availability. AA having the best availability to get you to a hub or city to connect to an international flight means more international availability.
Overall, AA (and OneWorld) scored very well, and I look forward to updating the post when AA.com properly shows the additional 5 partner airlines.
![The [Only] United MileagePlus Award Chart](https://travelisfree.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/United-MileagePlus-United-Airlines-Award-Chart-120x86.jpg)
How much of that AA availability was British Airways though?
When I did a search unchecking BA (so it was no longer an option), I still saw plenty of availability. And many of the dates I saw with BA had AA flight availability to LHR, and then BA flights within Europe.
However, while there are plenty of days available with AA/Iberia, unchecking BA took away tons of results on any given day.
In other words, there is tons more availability if you would consider TATL on BA (which I wouldn’t), and still decent availability without.
Glad you went that extra step in the analysis. Like others, I consider BA availability across the Atlantic to not be award flights at all. Those are slightly discounted (if that) paid flights once you consider the ludicrous “fees”. Every so often BA sends me surveys asking me to evaluate their program, and every time that’s about the only thing I comment on. I hope everybody does the same.
Yes I agree with Duane: Anything on BA with AA miles is the same as non-existent.
I also agree with that.
AA also seems to be the worst offender of classifying international trips with one leg in domestic “first” and then international segment in economy as “business/first” and I could see this throwing off the numbers if not adjusted for. SFO-PHL in domestic first and PHL-PRG in economy prices as business but it’s definitely not a “business class” award.
Yes indeed! Very frustrating sifting through results where only a small leg is First but the whole itinerary is deemed “business”
Hmmmm I fly a few times a year to Asia using AA MILES in business …….next May/ June there are 7 of 30 dates with availability…….it’s not great but if your flexible you can find business class on AA……Great to see you posting again
My mistake …..read it wrong
Glad you are back.
I think you should have you table in the form X/Y and not percent. % don’t tell me how many flights you looked at and how much to trust your data i.e is it a comprehensive study or gives a rough idea.
Good work nevertheless. What’s next on your plate?
Did you happen to check flights to Hawaii? I have some UR points that I’ve been trying to use for next summer and am struggling to find any space from mid-june to mid-August
“It’s also worth noting that AA had the best domestic award availability.” I am laughing at it. We all know domestic redemption value is far worth than international ones. But even so, I still failed to spend my AA miles that I got years ago. The only way to spend them is through their partner at specific routes.
Back to domestic one, you will either not see a saver rate at all (80% chance) or see a terrible route (e.g. 2 stops for a short distance and long stopover)(10-20%). So please help me to get rid of those miles. I know the seats are there (if you pay in cash, the route is much better), but they just don’t allow you to redeem at saver rate. How about that?
AA deserves 0 sympathy for the routes they don’t show on their website. It’s a total pain to try and use AA miles with a partner not on their site. Meanwhile they pull stunts like yesterday where they show it can be done but are intentionally not rolling it out to users.
AA’s award availability has definitely gotten better — and funkier — in the past year. They seem to be using an algo that specifically increases award availability for connecting traffic. I’ve even seen cases where you can book a “saver” award availability to one of their hubs if you say you are travelling beyond the hub. Like say you really want to travel from Miami to Philly (two AA hubs). But if you look for award availability from MIA to MDT (Harrisburg, PA) more seats connecting in PHL become available! With carry-on luggage, you can obviously just get off in Philly.
yeah, its called married segment logic
Have you investigated award availability on LAN to/from SA? I’ve searched through BA (Qantas search is crap for LAN and South America), and not been impressed. Super stingy with space, especially business. I don’t think this would add substantially to AA’s coverage of SA.
Suggestion: It would be easier for the readers to absorb the data if you presented it in simple bar charts
Thanks for a great writeup…glad you are back!
One tangible difference between AA & UA (can’t speak to Delta) international awards is that AA *almost always* requires 2 domestic legs before leaving the country while UA rarely does.
So even though AA might have better availability, the inconvenience of an additional (stupid) domestic stopover makes their awards too inconvenient to actually use.
In other words, AA penalizes me for using award miles while UA doesn’t. That’s pretty big to me.
Glad you are posting again!!!
I’m actually pretty surprised about DL/domestic. At times I’ve gotten some great deals, but on most flights I’ve needed, their flights were 33k or even more…for one way! And often inconvenient flight times on those. Simply atrocious.
I’ve used up most of my sky miles stash and really focusing on AA. Don’t forget their reduced mileage awards! I didn’t even know about those until recently, but probably 60% of my domestic flights are these now. Can’t beat a one-way for 8750 miles.
Also forgot to mention AA and UA especially have more of the weirdo middle-of-nowhere airports than DL. Yay for Essential Air Service flights (primarily UA).
Good post. As a follow up article it would be good to see the average fuel surcharges by destination by airline. (Maybe an updated matrix cheatsheet to get an approx idea by airline). Also nice to somehow analyze the saver route option provided… seems United is the best at providing direct flights when leaving from a hub city.
+1 yeah, this is particularly relevant for BA TATL
Happy to see you posting again. Thought website had died. Glad it didn’t. I assume this availability is not super saver levels as my experience with international award flights is United wins hands down against Delta and wins hands down versus AA when you exclude BA with its outrageous fees