Originally Posted by
planestupid
The reason why business award seats are so hard to find is simple: Air France/KLM do not want you to redeem unless they have seats which would go unsold otherwise. And if they do allow you to redeem they are trying to charge you as many miles and scamcharges as they can possibly get away with. On the routes that I use most (Europe-Canada and Europe-East Asia) the "flexible award" (i.e. twice-as-expensive award) has now become the rule but used to be the exception when it was introduced.
Something seems to have changed somewhat recently in this regard. It used to be that AF would release O inventory very early, then black-out O a few months /weeks ahead, and re-open O depending on # of unsold seats closer to departure (within 2 weeks). In the past, I've had no difficulties redeeming or upgrading in O, not being a FB elite.
Now, checking ExpertFlyer and airfrance.us, I can't seem to find any O on any TATL route for the next few weeks/months. Checking this week's JFK-CDG for instance, no O despite wide availability in all fare buckets (therefore, not likely a protection for accommodation of oversold Y or PV).
