Exclusive data reveals the airlines with the best award availability

March 16, 2021

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15 min read

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Many airlines allow you to redeem miles for flights with no blackout dates. This means that if there's a seat available for sale, then you'll be able to book it with miles. The problem is, you'll sometimes need to pay a hefty premium for this luxury.

Typically, to get the lowest rates, there needs to be saver-award space available. And with many airlines shifting toward more dynamic pricing, they've been making less of these awards available.

Today, we're going to analyze exclusive data from ExpertFlyer (owned by TPG’s parent company, Red Ventures) to uncover which airline offers the best saver award availability. We're going to break down our findings by type of route (domestic vs. international) and class of service.

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Methodology

First things first, for this analysis, we're only looking at data pertaining to American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Delta and United as these are the only major U.S. airlines that differentiate saver and standard awards. When saver space is available, you'll generally also be able to book the award through partner programs. Meanwhile, the "standard" no-blackout awards aren't available to partners.

The concept of saver space is irrelevant for airlines like Southwest and JetBlue as they offer just one type of award. With these airlines, every available seat is bookable with points and is priced dynamically based on the actual cost. As such, you'll always get a fairly consistent value from your points with these airlines. This makes these programs especially appealing for families and beginners who don't want to deal with availability limitations or calculating whether a specific redemption is a good deal.

Related: 12 tips for using frequent flyer miles for family travel

We’re using the same overall methodology we’ve used in prior posts, looking only at unique flight searches. We considered the overall success rate for searches conducted from Jan. 1 to March 1, 2021, and all were for travel at least 14 days out.

As mentioned above, the data is based solely on searches conducted through ExpertFlyer. For the uninitiated, ExpertFlyer is one of the most powerful tools out there for frequent flyers. One of its features is the ability to search for award inventory from most major airlines with a pretty clean user interface. While the data serves as an indicator of overall award inventory, it doesn’t cover every flight on every airline across the entire booking window. So, your searches may differ from the overall trends.

Search results from ExpertFlyer beta available to premium members. (Photo courtesy of ExpertFlyer)

All in all, we looked at data from a total of 256,503 unique flights and found an overall success rate of 11.7% across all of the airlines. That's probably much lower than you'd expect, especially considering the current drop in airfare, so let's dig a bit deeper.

Best airline for domestic award availability

Delta SkyMiles

Just looking at the numbers, Delta ranked as the best airline for domestic award availability, both for economy class and first class. 49.8% of domestic economy searches were successful and 30.8% of domestic first class searches were successful. However, there are other factors that need to be considered.

While we had data for nearly 70,000 domestic American Airlines flights, 93,000 United flights and over 20,000 Alaska flights, there were only about 2,100 Delta flights searched — about 1,200 for first class and 800 for economy. You'll also want to note that with Delta, in particular, saver availability doesn't guarantee that it's bookable through all partners. With Virgin Atlantic not being a part of the SkyTeam alliance, Flying Club's availability doesn't always fully match that of other partners, such as Air France-KLM Flying Blue.

Some of the most-searched Delta routes for economy awards included Atlanta (ATL) to Orlando (MCO) (28% success rate), Austin (AUS) to New York-JFK (91% success rate) and Los Angeles (LAX) to Maui (OGG) (24% success rate).

For first class, popular routes included Atlanta to Las Vegas (LAS) (22% success rate), Atlanta to New York (LGA) (73% success rate) and Austin to New York-JFK (58% success rate). However, the most-searched routes for first class were San Francisco (SFO) to Atlanta, Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP) to Honolulu (HNL) and Los Angeles to Maui and no first class availability was found on these routes. No saver availability was found for Delta One on transcontinental routes like New York-JFK to Los Angeles or San Francisco either.

Although a short flight, Charlotte (CLT) to Atlanta was popular among both economy and first class searches and had an impressive 100% success rate for both cabins.

American AAdvantage

Moving on, American Airlines was the next best airline for domestic award availability, both for economy class and business/first (American is the only U.S. carrier to offer both business class and first class). American's overall success rate was 34.8% for economy, 24.6% for business/first class and 2.9% for Flagship First on three-cabin planes.

Here's a look at some of American's most-searched routes:

Miami (MIA) to Los Angeles - 71% success rate for economy, 34% for business, 40% for first
Los Angeles to Maui - 19% for economy, 55% for business
New York-JFK to Los Angeles - 58% for economy, 22% for business, 0% for first
Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) to Los Angeles - 63% for economy, 38% for business
Los Angeles to Chicago (ORD) - 11% for economy, 10% for business
Dallas/Fort Worth to Chicago - 99% for economy, 72% for business

Alaska Mileage Plan

Alaska offered a fair amount of economy availability but was a bit stingier with first class. Alaska's overall success rate was 27.6% for economy and 8.6% for first class.

Here's a look at some of Alaska's most-searched routes:

Boston (BOS) to Seattle (SEA) - 1.8% success rate for economy, 0.8% for first class
Seattle to Maui - 59.8% for economy, 0.6% for first class
Portland (PDX) to San Francisco - 93.3% for economy, 0% for first class
San Francisco to Seattle - 95.7% for economy, 22.6% for first class
Seattle to New York-JFK - 28.7% for economy, 0.6% for first class

United MileagePlus

(Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Even before United removed its published award charts, the carrier had the reputation of releasing little saver award availability. And the data supports that. 23.9% of domestic economy searches were successful and just 5% of first class searches were successful.

Here's an overview of the most popular United searches:

Newark (EWR) to Orlando - 15% success rate for economy, 0% for first class
San Francisco to Los Angeles - 24% for economy, 0% for first class
Houston (IAH) to Los Angeles - 15% for economy, 0% for first class
Newark to San Francisco - 9% for economy, 9% for business class
San Francisco to Houston - 45% for economy, 16% for first class
Newark to Los Angeles - 86% for economy, 1% for business class

Best airline for international award availability

Now, let's take a look at international availability. For this section, we're only going to compare availability between American, Delta and United as Alaska has a much smaller international network.