<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by hfly:
There will be availability for awards in September.
There are a lot of seats being held off the market and to a certain extent this strategy has worked especially over the next month (then again last month they did allow over 200 seats to be redeemed for miles after they were supposedly no longer doing so).</font>
Just like AF made award seats available (the last flight flew with 30+ empty seats!). There will never be any award seats released, BA can't absorb the bad will that will generate after having full R fares unavailable on current flights -- and I am told they have a hefty wait list for many flights. In the worst case they might give some seats to a consolidator, or to concierges at the right hotels, but they won't release them as FF awards. I've spent some effort investigating this and don't make these comments off the cuff. Of course the airline industry is unpredictable, but in this case the number of seats involved is tiny so BA can do whatever they please (I'm guessing they'll give the seats to staff before making award seats available).