GreatBritishBAECOff

Hi all,
I've got a redemption booking for our Honeymoon next June to the West Coast, and managed to snag 2 F tickets outbound and 2 J tickets inbound, all on the A380 so pretty happy with that!

I would naturally like to upgrade the inbound if possible, but now that -355 has gone, I'm assuming there is now a bit of a lull in activity. I was planning on checking flights a few days around my desired departure date for availability each morning when I get up, but seeing as it's a whole year until we travel is it really productive?

Does availability ever 'pop up' from now until much closer (2 weeks or less) before travel? I know the technical answer is 'yes, availability can appear at any time', but will it ever actually happen?... I'm happy to check each day, multiple times if there's any chance, but is it realistic?

I assume I can set an expertflyer alert for Z class on those flights, but is the alert instant or is there a delay?
Thanks for any advice.

corporate-wage-slave

Unfortunately Mystic Meg doesn't post here too frequently, but you are doing the right thing. Avios redemption is only released once a day, at midnight / 1am area London time, so checking first thing in the morning is good, but that's it for 24 hours, short of any IT blip on the BA side, naturally. From 2 weeks in the chances increase, and even more so in the last few days before departure. And yes it definitely does happen. If you are know the route well and track the fare buckets for a few days, you can sometimes make a guess about it. I get it right on about 80% of occasions, so there will be times when BA "should" release seats and simply won't.

You can even upgrade on the day of departure - to take account of the final witching hour - but in that case you best not check-in since it's too much hassle for many agents to offload you and then rebook you. So that works best if you have status and have already got decent seats in the bag, since I am not I would recommend deferring OLCI, thereby potentially not getting an upgrade and ending up in less good seats as well.

Sixth Freedom

What I would do is look at the availability right now for the same route over the next three months.

Are there any dates when your day of the week is available for upgrade? If so, work out how many weeks ahead of departure it is and then enter a calendar entry reminding you to check again at the same stage in the booking cycle for your flight next year.

fripperies

Congratulations- you've done well already. You don't say which city you want to fly home from or if you are flexible. Obviously you can forget SAN as its 3 class and I would say forget LAX because F redemptions just don't happen. You can try checking daily as I have but it's a fruitless task IMO. SFO is probably your best bet. Multiple redemption seats in F are not uncommon (and often better availability than J).

Globaliser

And to answer this one: No, you can't set an EF alert because BA doesn't publish award booking classes.

Greenpen

The technical answer is yes. and the real answer is yes. Look every day and the Fs will pop up if you're lucky - and not if you're not!

GreatBritishBAECOff

Thanks, the current routing is F outbound to SFO and then J inbound from LAX, so I guess it's a tough one! I would be tempted to switch to SFO to get home with an internal flight from LAX, but the later LAX flight is actually quite a good time of day for us, with it being a holiday trip so getting a full day in then heading to the airport to go home. That's why I'm not hugely fussed as it'll be overnight all the way back.

Quick follow up - seat selection for a trip like this... I guess the couple pair on the main A380 deck is alright for us, we've been in those before. If we pay for seat reservations then manage to get an upgrade can you reclaim the fee?

SteveF

The T-355 guarantee of availability only actually applies to Y and J seats. A recent daily check for F seats to/from BOM showed availability to be a bit patchy with a clear pattern (i.e. the same number of seats were released for the same days each week) with some dates being released close to T-355 and others not at all during the few weeks I was monitoring the route, so your inbound F seats may have been released and snapped up, may not have been released yet, or may never be released.

It's definitely worth continuing to check daily though.

jlh274

I know it is a different destination but I managed to UUA from CW to F around 48 hours before our flight to Barbados in March. Two seats just appeared. Always worth checking!

windowontheAside

Trouble for OP is that they're looking to upgrade the return and they probably doesn't want to spend their honeymoon obsessively checking availability every few hours!