JetAway

Japan must be really popular this Summer.

LeviFlight

No, if you read above, availability of saver award space was turned off in late March.

Signed up for the AA card (60k miles) and have my first int flight with AA next month. New ground for me but will need award availability to get Mrs Flight back from Europe this summer. Thank goodness the AA system includes flights to the US. (Perhaps this is the pivot to more AA flying and less UA.)

UA, come on, sort it out - you're losing customers here!

JetAway

July & August seemed to have dried up, according to some posters. That is "Summer."

zombietooth

I have not been so trusting of EF and have been checking everyday for non-"Mixed Cabin" (no Y) J/F saver awards from US hubs to MLE in September. I looked yesterday and got 2 J seats IAD-MLE thru NRT and SIN on my desired outbound date. One F seat was also available into NRT, but UA F isn't worth 20K more than J. I never got an alert from EF. Now these seats were only available for 12 hours at the most before I grabbed them. Since I don't know how often EF sweeps the inventory with their search algorithm, maybe these seats weren't available long enough to register.

I searched from *A US hubs to SIN and the segments US-NRT/PEK, NRT/PEK-SIN since SIN-MLE is widely available in saver J on SQ, and then added MLE to get the correct saver total of 60K.

I had already booked my return a couple of weeks ago in mixed F and J.

The weird thing about all of these awards is that they weren't from elite inventory. The were all simple O/I awards and available to anyone with an account.

FlyWorld

Could there be something happening that has created a massive surge in demand from Japan to US during that period, but not creating any comparable surge in demand from the US to Japan in the same period?

I know the Japanese like to travel and escape the summer monsoons and heat. And, I know they have "golden week" which is super-peak for travel.

But, what I'm seeing here still doesn't make sense. Especially since it's one direction only. Have the Japanese decided to call it a day, and they're all moving to the US now?

Your observations on AA just add to the mystery.

So I decided to take this up a notch and I joined EF and did a full flight search to look at fare buckets on all airlines.

What I saw was astounding.

Looking at 7/2 through 7/5, I saw that UA 838 has 9 in every fare bucket all the way down to L. Only K-N (bottom 3 buckets) are at 0. They even have Z9 and P9, which is often an indicator of low loads and low demand.

I see lots of low fare bucket availability on JL and DL and NH. None of them appear close to being sold out. But, all of them have less availability than UA. They are sold out in the lowest fare buckets and they have less than 9 in many other buckets.

No indication of overwhelming demand, but indicators suggest UA has less demand than anyone else on the route.

Focusing on that clearly empty UA 838, I flipped over to the screen that shows award availability.

And, what's even more fascinating is that I see a ton of R space! As much as R9 on some routes. I've *never* seen this much R space since $mi$ek took over.

However, I and IN are all at zero.

So, something fishy is going on.

The plane is empty. R is wide open. Yet, I is closed.

Makes no sense.

milepig

Please read the threads. Yes, July and August seem to have dried up, but given all evidence it isn't because of popularity but because UA did something to make no seats available for saver awards - either deliberately or by mistake. There are plenty of seats available, the seating charts looks wide open, but zero saver awards on any flights for any dates. Something's rotten in the State of Smisek.

craz

So if you want to blame Smisek and that hes up to no good, Did UA just outbid US for AA?

As I said last post on the previous pg (for the reg post counters)AA availabilty is Worse then UAs! Yet last i knew Smisek isnt running AA.

So lets bash him when he deserves to be, this time he doesnt unless he and AA were in on the fix together. Paging Glen Beck , Paging Glen Beck

MSUspartans

Can anyone verify that the UA saver award for First/Businessfirst from EWR - HNL would be code I and not O

FlyWorld

I'm not sure how accurate your conclusions are.

The focus of my question here is Japan to SFO.

I took a deep dive into NRT-SFO using EF.

To be fair, I went back to EF and took a closer look at AA and their saver/upgrade availability.

This is the apples to apples comparison.

What I found is that AA has plenty of Z inventory from NRT to LAX on the same dates when UA has no saver inventory, F or J. Z on AA is "saver first class" category.

I also found lots of C on AA, which is their equivalent to R.

I had to look at NRT LAX b/c AA doesn't fly NRT SFO.

I see no U on AA, which is equivalent to I (saver biz). But, I'd have no trouble at all getting from NRT to LAX in saver F on AA for various days in July and this is much, much, much different from UA, where there is no saver anything, anywhere, on any day.

Not the same.

fjfv19

Yes, I can confirm. Please see this useful post:

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thewan...he-new-united/

cheltzel

I just looked at all *A award availability between NRT, HND, ICN, PEK to either LAX or SFO (2 seats). From June 1 to September 1.

I found very little availability on UA, NH, OZ, SQ, or TG. There were 3 flights available:

OZ202 (ICN-LAX) 8/30 J
CA987 (PEK-LAX) 9/1 Y
CA983 (PEK-LAX) 9/1 Y

So I don't think it is another great SMI/J conspiracy or the evil doings of SHARES.

Just my personal speculation ...

The period 7/25 to 8/26 is an OZ blackout period.

http://us.flyasiana.com/Global/US/en...?fid=CLUB16100

This period (7/1 to 9/1) may include blackout periods for other carriers.

It could be that the award availability has already been snapped up.

FlyWorld

How are you searching? I saw normal space on UA in June.

cheltzel

ANA (via KVS Tool)

I wasn't looking before. I started searching this afternoon (after reading the recent posts on this thread).

FlyWorld

That's odd b/c June looked normal to me on united.com. I wonder if it's phantom inventory?

cheltzel

Oops!! I will edit my post. I searched July 1 - September 1.

My bad.

Searching June now.