Originally Posted by
PSU Mudder
Now that airlines have wised up (for them) and moved from making reward seats available at 330 days and instead utilizing yield management, often times seats that are clearly going to be unsold (say a flight is only 35% full a week out) become available as rewards close in to the flight date. Those are great opportunities for airlines to clear mileage off the books without chancing losing a revenue opportunity. The close-in fee discourages travelers from helping the airline out in that regard.
I disagree, to some extent. When airlines do not make rewardseats available until withing 21 days of departure, they force passengers who need to or are willing to redeem rewards to wait until a few weeks before departure to book. That forces them to pay the close-in booking fees (and feel lucky that they found reward space to begin with).