Dan Leifker

I always thought that the Star Alliance (United, Lufthansa, USAirways,
etc) had an "earn and burn" policy on frequent-flier programs: you could
earn your miles on one partner and redeem them on any other.

In theory, this appears to be true, but in practice it doesn't seem to
be. I went to the United web site and saw a zillion flights that were
open for award travel using United's frequent-flier miles. So I called
USAirways (where I had a lot of miles) and tried to redeem them on one
of those United flights.

No luck. The USAirways agent told me that nothing was available, even
though the United web site clearly showed that many flights were still
open. The USAirways agent (who was very nice) went off to talk to
someone in "inventory management," whatever that is, and came back 5
minutes later to explain that United has its own spaces for their own
frequent fliers, BUT that only a tiny few of them are opened up for Star
Alliance partners. So effectively if you earn miles on one parter, like
USAirways, you might have a lot of trouble finding flights on Lufthansa
or United to use them on.

Were my experiences unusual, or have others also run into this trouble?

dleifker