hollyss

It looks like mileage inventory comes up first with agents before going on line by a day or 2. If you're trying to get tickets for hawaii during holidays, is there a best time to call? It use to be in the early AM 330 days ahead but now they say they are not even posting mileage inventory for peak holiday time.

BaldEmu

I have just gone through the same thing getting tickets to SYD over the holidays. It used to be the rule that calling about 3:30am EST would get you first dibs on the newly released inventory. This time I found it to be totally random - when I called at 3:30am there had been no economy inventory released, but business and first had been. I got the date I wanted by calling at 9am in the morning, after my 3:30 call had been unsuccessful.

It does still seem to be the case that the inventory becomes available on the first day the flight is loaded into the system (12/22 to SYD became available sometime in the early hours of 1/25) but I haven't been able to figure out any pattern in the time of day, unlike in earlier years.

One thing that did become abundantly clear to me this time is how much better off you are calling the Mileage Plus Int'l Awards desk than the 1K line - I had 3 unhelpful agents and one helpful agent on the 1K line (2 just refused to even check inventory for me) whereas on the Awards desk I consistently had helpful agents - though the wait times are way worse. It also probably didn't help (in terms of wait times and agent helpfulness) that the dates I wanted outbound were released to coincide with the snow on the East Coast.......

Baze

Interesting. I had just the opposite booking 2 first class awards to Sydney. International Awards desk was unable to help me and referred me to the 1K desk. 1K desk got me just what I needed. Booked end of Dec for trip in middle of Feb.