Originally Posted by
GaryD
We wanted 4 J Saver AAward seats on AA JFK-LHR-JFK in August for a Baltic cruise, only one day flexibility. We were ready at the 11-month mark: only BA available, with the high supplemental "fees," so reserved those, and added an alert on AwardNexus. From late September until today, only the BA flights show available (four flights each day to date), never a single AA seat in J for our preferred date outbound or inbound.
We're also using JAL miles for flights NRT/HND-LHR-NRT/HND. There, we preferred JL over BA, looking for one seat in F. We got a seat in F on JL NRT-LHR (now changed to HND-LHR), but the return is only available on BA, again with the high supplemental "fees." Again, AwardNexus shows no availablity from late September until today in JL F. The JMB Diamond (ow Emerald) waitlist doesn't help either.
I've got to conclude, joint partner BA is tasked to supply the award seats, since that's where the fees are. It's just business.
So it appears. If you guys were waiting several months already and didn't see a single one pop up, that tells me that the thesis is likely correct.
I guess they require BA to carry the award flag on that route. I also put an alert on EF but I guess that was for naught. I don't even mind the summer blackouts, as that is somewhat reasonable, but why not make flights available from Sep on? There is a ton of availability in April for F.
In conclusion, I guess we can shut this down at this point. Between your experience and 225 people viewing this thread and none of them(presumably) having booked a sAAver J or F after May 1st, I can only imagine that AA, in fact, did not release any availability for those flights under those conditions.