Fabulous Fridays: Airlines Enhanced Award Flight Availability For In-House FFP Members

This week’s Fabulous Fridays is about a trend that has been increasing in recent years, as in frequent flyer programs of various airlines making additional award space available for their own members while masking it for partners.

Award space has become rare in many cases and with a lot of programs selling miles, some carriers combat this by reserving award space (especially in premium class) for their own members while masking it from outside access.

Not too long ago, it used to be that you could access pretty much the same award seats across all the partner programs, for example, within an alliance, but then the constant flow of cheaply obtained miles ended in an almost permanent run on the most attractive airlines’ premium seat inventory.

As customers of these carriers were increasingly miffed, airlines started to test out a new strategy of only making part of their inventory available to partners while holding some back that could only be booked from their own frequent flyers.

Now, ordinarily, you would think that this is something negative, but it doesn’t have to be as long as you have the ability to access these programs by means of points transfers from financial institutions or hotel programs. This practice has led to much better availability across the board for certain airlines.

Here are some carriers who hold back inventory for their own FFP members:

• ANA Mileage Club
• Cathay Pacific
• Japan Airlines JAL Mileage Bank
• Lufthansa Miles&More
• Singapore Airlines Krisflyer
• Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus

A very good example of this is my flight on Cathay Pacific from Frankfurt to Hong Kong. This CX288 is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to book. You can’t find availability for it on AAdvantage or British Airways Avios. Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, however, has a pretty decent availability for this route, and I was able to ticket my one-way for 84,000 Asia Miles.

Cathay does this very consistently, even and especially on the intra-Asia routes. ANA and JAL are another extreme example. Almost impossible to find awards these days except with their own miles.

Programs such as Lufthansa Miles&More also limit access to First Class awards on Lufthansa and SWISS, not only to their own members, but in the case of SWISS, only for Senator/HON Circle members. For the time being, non-status members can still book Lufthansa First Class, and Lufthansa releases First Class to other  Star Alliance partners 10-14 days prior to departure.

In addition to this, some programs such as Air Canada Aeroplan, American AAdvantage, Delta Skymiles, and United Mileage Plus also offer mileage seats on almost any flight, but for an obscene amount of miles, which is obviously unattractive and a waste.

Using 250k for a one-way from LAX to HKG is pretty insane, but of course, this is basically a flex award, and it can be used for every last seat on that flight, not relying on I (saver award) class availability.

Conclusion

While many don’t like this trend of mileage awards being increasingly reserved for the airlines own members, I think it also has advantages and shows how important it is to diversify miles and points balances today.

Rather than having a large balance in one program where I can only book limited flights based on a very basic availability, I rather split 500,000 points among 4-5 programs and use them when I have a need. At the same time, I stopped buying miles from Lifemiles and Alaska Airlines because finding useful awards there has become a pain.

Ideally, I keep the currency centralized, such as Amex Membership Rewards or Marriott Bonvoy, until the point arises when I need miles, and then I transfer a whole batch. I can definitely see positive sides to this strategy.

How many different accounts with balances do you maintain presently?

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