No matter how cheap your cheap fares are, be they cheap airplane tickets or cheap vacation packages, flying for free is every frequent fliers dream. The problem is that more miles are chasing fewer reward seats and it looks like it is only going to get worse.
Supply of airline seats is down over the last two years as airlines have significantly reduced their total fleet and seat capacity in the face of the recession. Load factors (which is the percent of seats on airplanes occupied by paying passengers) of the major airlines (American, Continental, Delta, United, and US Airways) in April of this year averaged 85 percent. Only a few years ago the load factors of major airlines averaged 65 percent.
Demand for award seats has never been higher with all of the affinity credit card programs that are now tied to airlines. It is estimated that airline loyalty programs worldwide have at least nine trillion frequent flier miles outstanding, with customers eager to use them.
Given that the economy is improving and both business and leisure travel is increasing, the availability of free award airline seats is only going to become increasingly scarce.
A survey of 6,600 customers seeking reward seats in February and March by IdeaWorks and ezRez Software revealed that there is a wide disparity in how airlines were able to fill customer requests, with Continental doing the best, succeeding 71 percent of the time and US Airways doing the worst filling under 11 percent. Other major airlines came in as follows: United, at almost 69 percent, American just under 58 percent, and Delta at almost 13 percent.
Less frequent flier tickets are being given out by the airlines. Continental distributed 1.3 million award tickets in 09, which equaled 6 percent of its total miles flown, down from 1.6 million in 08, which totaled 8.5 percent of its miles flown.
Frequent fliers increasing unhappiness is being driven by more than simply the decline of available free tickets. They are also upset over the increasing number of miles being required to purchase award seats and a growing trend of airlines to add fees onto their free tickets.
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