Asiana Club - Any chance of 2 awards in F ICN-JFK?

I have redeemed a *A award in F ICN-JFK in Oct. Does anyone have experience in getting a second award seat to open up? Or do they just give up 1 seat for *A awards? My partner is flying UA, but would rather fly OZ with me.

I have redeemed a *A award in F ICN-JFK in Oct. Does anyone have experience in getting a second award seat to open up? Or do they just give up 1 seat for *A awards? My partner is flying UA, but would rather fly OZ with me.

I have seen two F availability on ANA tool for ICN-SFO but no idea if you'd find same for JFK.

How about slumming it together in C? Might be easier to find the space, save a few miles for the next F trip then.

I have seen that as well on ORD-ICN and ICN-ORD, the flights I have already use UA miles in F, but it still show available in the ANA tool. However, I am not sure if it is only for NH members ? Maybe only open 1 seat for UA. But if other carriers can redemm that F seat, it would require a lot more miles.

Definitely possible for C as I have done that before, but never tried F before.

LAX

I have seen that as well on ORD-ICN and ICN-ORD, the flights I have already use UA miles in F, but it still show available in the ANA tool. However, I am not sure if it is only for NH members ? Maybe only open 1 seat for UA. But if other carriers can redemm that F seat, it would require a lot more miles.

If you're using UA miles, it's pretty much random chance as far as I know whether UA agent will see the same availability ANA shows. Got to love their Starnet filtering.

I booked 2 x F tix with bmi miles for Christmans this year ont he JFK-ICN route.

They seem to only open 2 x on the 747 service ie the 777 tends to only open 1 from what I can tell.

If you're using UA miles, it's pretty much random chance as far as I know whether UA agent will see the same availability ANA shows. Got to love their Starnet filtering.

I think it is more than random chance, as basically whenever I call, OZ was always avialable but not other carriers. There are increasingly more people asking about OZ C and F service, all of those are booked with UA miles, as UA offered a much lower redemm rate for F before 1/1/09 (even with the new rate is still lower than OZ, 145K vs 170K). Whenever OZ is not availble through UA, it is full rather than starnet blocking, as I had double checked with the ANA tool.

We had an easy time a couple years ago scoring two F awards ORD-ICN. Not ideal if you're originating in NYC, but NYC-ORD is an easy add-on.

David

1. OZ does manage its award inventory, I've seen them open up additional space after booking awards which take up existing inventory, eg there were 2 F award seats available ICN-LAX.. I grabbed those... and a few months later there were 2 more.

2. If it doesnt happen far out it may well happen close-in to departure.

3. As others have observed, OZ offers award seats but UA may not let you book them ("starnet blocking" or "filtering").

4. Historically this has been less of an issue with OZ than with other carriers, but it really does depend, much blocking was going on the last few days of December as UA members tried to burn their miles before the devaluation -- United 'budgets' redemptions on each carrier by quarter, based on historical trends, they will only spend so much per carrier each quarter. If redemptions are behind schedule, they may allow more at the end of the quarter. If above expectation blocking gets worse. Sometimes the beginning of a quarter is better, sometimes the end, based on how redemptions have gone historically and how they're progressing relative to expectation.

5. UA filtering of OZ has gotten worse in the past 3-4 months, I have seen it many many times. And it can even be seemingly random, not just route-based, OZ might be offering ICN-LAX 7 days in a week and UA might only let you book 4 of those. And for a friend's redemption they're flying JFK-ICN and all connecting flights to PEK are available per OZ but blocked by UA, they have to fly Air China instead for the short leg.

6. To the earlier poster who has seen F award seats, ICN-SFO, that's some trick!!! :)

Oh, and except during OZ blackout dates OZ F awards are offered almost every day LAX-ICN and v.v., pretty good availability JFK-ICN v.v., and much less availability for some reason ORD-ICN v.v.