I'm trying to decide which airline for my Marriott TP redemption and am vacillating between AA, Alaska (AS), and UA miles. I'm looking through the lens of a person with no status on any airline, and wanting maximum flexibility on tickets with the lowest penalties for changes.
For anyone who's used AS miles or UA miles to book award travel, could you list some positives about those systems?
I've used AA miles a few times, and like using AA's system for a few reasons:
- You can put tickets on a 5 day hold without giving a credit card number. This allows you to transfer/buy miles if you need to, or just watch the cash prices over those 5 days. If you decide to not execute the order, the hold expires with no further action on your part.
- The cancellation and miles redeposit fee is $150/1st pax + $25/add'l pax on the same record locator. For 3 people, that would be $200 total, (it would be $375 with AS, and $225-$375 with UA).
- There is no fee to change dates/times/partners or routing as long as the origin & destination remain the same. The award tickets expire within one year of original ticketing which I think is standard.
Award availability is a little rough with AA, but domestically I fly SW with RR points nearly exclusively (since I have a CP and a stash of URs). So these points would probably be used for international travel at some point. I know AS changed some rules this year so I'm hoping that their system will be relatively stable for a couple of years and doesn't devalue a lot. UA devaluation happened last year, and AA's devalued a couple years ago so it's probably "due" for another devaluation.