answer:There are always seats available, just to places you don’t want to go and at times when you want to stay home. Seriously, the airlines have been reducing the availability of seats over the last few years. They have less capacity than in the 90’s and they would rather get paid for the seats. The other reason is that the airlines have devalued the mileage. When the airline affinity programs were first introduced around 1980, American AAdvantage was the first, you have to EARN the miles by flying somewhere and the airlines thereby rewarded their best paying customers. Now you can get miles through credit cards, 1–800-flowers and other programs not related to actually flying on an airplane. I have accumulated about 240,000 Amex points that I can use on most airlines, except United., American and USAir. because I charge large corporate expenses to my company card. I only flew about 20 segments last year, all short hauls on the east coast, but I managed to “earn” 240,000 as shown above. They (the airlines) just don’t want to reward their best customers anymore. SRM