Originally Posted by
Geoflying
Surely if there is a Market Fare Reward "economy class seat" available then there is an "unsold economy class seat" available. Seems to be a discrepancy here between what is advertised and reality.
IKK, even in its glory days, was never available for flights that are oversold (even if they are still allowing even more reservations to make it even more oversold).
Obviously I don't know why the OP cannot get IKK awards for those particular flights, but if the flights are currently oversold then this would not be a new issue with the IKK benefit.
I wouldn't call the matter a "discrepancy" per se. I'd call it a lack of clarity. The language used to describe the Altitude benefits is unclear and differs from the technical language used by to describe airline tickets and reservations. They use the language "access to any...unsold seat".
But airlines do not sell seats - they sell tickets. A ticket is not a seat on any particular flight. That is a reservation, which is not the same thing as a ticket. You can have a reservation without a ticket (for sure) and a ticket without a reservation (I think). So it doesn't make sense to talk about access to unsold seats.
How one acts on all this information is a matter of choice. Some people choose to learn all these technical details and at most roll their eyes at the marketing language used to vaguely describe the benefits. Other people will get extremely angry about the whole thing and decide this (very old) policy is something in fact a new policy that the airline recently invented (probably by airline employees they happen to know by name) to personally "screw" them over.