ATLANTA'S OUT FOR FREQUENT FLIER CROWD.

Byline: Karen Schwartz Associated Press 

Go West, young man. Or North. Or even to Hawaii. Just don't even think about using your frequent flier points to visit the hot spots in the Southeast this summer.

``There's a bottleneck caused by the Olympics with Atlanta being a hub city,'' said Randy Petersen, editor and publisher of InsideFlyer.

``People are flying into Tallahassee and renting cars'' to drive to Atlanta, he said. ``That whole area has been glutted by the overpopularity of the Olympics.''

But there is a silver lining.

``It's actually making award seats to the Northwest much easier to get,'' Petersen said.

At Delta Air Lines, travel through Atlanta, one of the airline's four hubs and the third busiest airport in the world, is blacked out for regular-level frequent flier members from July 17 to Aug. 6. The games are running July 19 to Aug. 4, and are expected to attract about 2 million visitors.

But, said Delta spokeswoman Jackie Tate, if you have the points, you can get around the blackout by redeeming 50,000 frequent flier points instead of the usual 25,000 points.

And that trend extends beyond just bookings for the busy Southeast. More and more passengers are cashing in extra points to get on flights to heavily traveled parts of the the country, as well.

That's just what Christian Super had to do when he flew from Los Angeles to New Orleans on United Airlines for the Mother's Day weekend. Calling only 10 days before he wanted to fly, he found no seats left for 25,000 frequent flier points, so he flew first class for 40,000 points and was able to go on the Friday and return Sunday.

``You can't always get exactly what you want, but there are certainly seats available,'' said Super, vice president of information systems for ASI Market Research in Glendale.

Petersen said, all in all, this summer is much like any other. If anything, last summer was worse because many airlines raised the number of points needed for a free ticket from 20,000 to 25,000, and many people were scrambling to use up their points, he said.

His magazine, which caters to frequent fliers, did a spot check of the availability of seats earlier this month by calling the 12 major frequent flier programs and requesting award seats for travel between July 15 and October.

The only problem they found was flying from New York to London on TWA and Continental.

``This time of the year, there's always a mad rush of people thinking they can go to Europe,'' Petersen said. ``Close to 70 percent are already booked up, with London being pretty much sold out through mid-July in terms of award seats.

``It's probably a good year to go to Hawaii. Not many people want to go to Hawaii in July,'' he said.

Steven R. Ricchiuto, chief financial economist at Barclays de Zoete Wedd Securities Inc. in New York, called United Airlines three weeks ago and booked four frequent flier seats to Hawaii for a trip in early August. He got the dates he wanted, but not the departure times.

Petersen suggests one reason people have been so frustrated this year is because they aren't veteran travelers.

``You have a new generation of people who are not seasoned frequent fliers taking advantage of their awards for the first time,'' he said.

THE UNFLAPPABLE FLIER

Some tips for successful summer travel on a frequent flier plane ticket:

Book as far in advance of the travel date as possible.

Be flexible in terms of the date, time of departure and routing.

Try not to travel during a peak time of day, which means hours popular with business travelers.

If you cannot get your first flight choice, call back because the inventory for frequent flier seats changes day to day on some airlines.

Think about visiting an alternate destination. Canada and the Northwest are easier to get to this summer.

If you must travel on an award ticket, see about using more points, or paying the difference, and upgrading to a higher class of service.

CAPTION(S):

Box

Box: THE UNFLAPPABLE FLIER (see text)