Rewards tougher to redeem as airlines fill flights

(From the latimes.com) All airline mileage reward programs are not created equal. In fact, finding the right one is more crucial than ever. With airlines eliminating routes because of declining demand and packing each plane as close to capacity as possible, it’s getting increasingly difficult to redeem your reward-program points for a seat on a plane.

In February, the average commercial plane in the U.S. flew 76.6% full, the highest percentage for that month since World War II, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

To determine which airlines make it easiest to turn reward points into airline seats, IdeaWorks, a Shorewood, Wis., airline consulting firm, and EzRez Software Inc., a San Francisco-based travel supplier, made more than 6,000 booking queries on the websites for 22 frequent flier programs during February and March.

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