On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 17:47:09 -0800, AES wrote some
stuff about " 380 fuel usage", to which I would like to add the following:

I think frequent flyer loyalty was seriously eroded also when the
airlines changed over from having more or less open availability for
award travel, except for certain blackout periods that were stated in
advance, and instead began limiting the number of FF award seats on any
flight to such low levels that cashing in FF miles for award travel
became, if not nearly impossible, at least an almost always unpleasant
and unrewarding hassle.

That would be "USA based Airlines". Just yesterday I cashed a bunch of miles
for a long flight out of Thailand on Thai Airways. This is for the evening
flight of 12 April. 13 April all the way to 18 April is the main National
Holiday in Thailand (Thai New Year) when the whole country has a holiday.

It's the equivalent of getting an award ticket Los Angeles to Paris on 23 or
24 December.

Cheers,
Chanchao