Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan - Optimal timing of award ticket redemption?

I'm trying to book a AS award ticket SEA to LAX... relatively frequently flights, short distance.
I'm looking at May of 2013, and the dates literally opened last week..
and already some of the departure times are on Full Fare?! What happened to the saver tickets?
I'm not pretty new to redeeming AS... so question: Will these have a potential to drop in point price later? (i.e. it's costing me 25K each way.. any potential to drop to 25K return)?

Thanks!

I'm trying to book a AS award ticket SEA to LAX... relatively frequently flights, short distance.
I'm looking at May of 2013, and the dates literally opened last week..
and already some of the departure times are on Full Fare?! What happened to the saver tickets?
I'm not pretty new to redeeming AS... so question: Will these have a potential to drop in point price later? (i.e. it's costing me 25K each way.. any potential to drop to 25K return)?

Thanks!

SEA-LAX? Some flights go out full, but with the high frequencies, there are a lot of seats on that city pair. Especially if you have some flexibility with the times, I would be shocked if saver space (W class) didn't open up at some point in the future, although it's tough to guess when it might.

I've set alerts for W space on ExpertFlyer (http://www.expertflyer.com) and had space open up anywhere from months out to just a few days out (and sometimes even just a few hours out).

If you're MVPG, you can book at the Full Flex level and change to Saver if they open it up later for free. If you're not MVPG, I doubt you'd be able to do that (although you could try to hold AS to its airfare guarantee, where they credit you the difference if the price drops! :D).

I'm trying to book a AS award ticket SEA to LAX... relatively frequently flights, short distance.
I'm looking at May of 2013, and the dates literally opened last week..
and already some of the departure times are on Full Fare?! What happened to the saver tickets?
I'm not pretty new to redeeming AS... so question: Will these have a potential to drop in point price later? (i.e. it's costing me 25K each way.. any potential to drop to 25K return)?

Thanks!I booked SEA-LAX F in May 2013 with no problem two weeks ago in F. My problem was ANC-SEA. 330 days out and there was no availability on any flight within a 5 day window.

Revenue management is reaching to the extreme end.

SO given it's all choice fare now.. i guess nothing to lose in waiting a while and see if a Super saver fare opens up?

Is there a particular reason you aren't willing to pay cash for these tickets? More miles than what you know what to do with? No way to scrounge up a couple hundred in cash for the next year?

My SEA-LAX ticket, purchased all of a week ago cost me $118.80 all-in (July peak travel season on a Friday, BTW). So it's not like these tickets are dear to come by. The prices might not be good right now because Virgin America doesn't do fares 330 days out. Once they do AS will make the fares drop accordingly.

IMO SEA-LAX r/t is a spectacularly poor way to spend your miles in terms of the return you get (probably less than a penny a mile)- the route is extremely competitive with Virgin and United flying it (plus Jet Blue on SEA-LGB, and a ton of WN/DL/UA one-stops, AND Alaska flying to LGB/BUR/ONT/SNA). Lots of seats, very little pricing power. I can't recall the last time I paid as much as $200 for a one-way.

But anyways, if you must... cash in your ticket for a flight on the day you want to fly, even if it's not the right time. Then day of flight, spend $25 (free if you're Gold) and same day change to the flight time you want. You're done.