Originally Posted by agjil

Does AS still have the issue of randomly not being able to see CX award space in premium cabins? (F and J)

Originally Posted by apple1122

trying to book DPS-HKG-LAX-SEA via CX using AS miles. Called many times, Alaska agent wasn't able to find the availability for DPS-HKG. whereas, JAL & BA site shows 4 seats in economy available. Also called AA to check DPS-HKG availability and AA agent said there are 2+ award seats available! It is getting frustrating!

Originally Posted by PV_Premier

My recent experience is that inventory visible to AS agent exactly matched what was offered on BA. Further, when I booked the seats (2 pax) the BA inventory count decreased by 2 almost instantly.

Originally Posted by smilee

And that is what I am trying to figure out.

You are right, sometimes it does match, sometimes it doesn't.

I have rule out phantom availability, as I have been able to book Cathay flights visible on BA.com with AA miles for example. I even hung up, and called again and spoke to a different AS agent, and received the same not available response with my Alaska miles, even though it really was bookable.

Originally Posted by miles2learn

Just to chime in, this was my experience as well. I've only booked CX using AS miles once. It was a week or two ago, what the agent was able to see matched what was available on BA. Fed them flight #s dates, etc. One leg at a time and they were able to book it no problem. Kind of funny, every time I'd feed her the next flight she kept warning me that it might price out as a separate award. Very glad I had researched and read the various resources available so that I was confident in what I was doing. In the end 50K miles and I'm flying business class to asia with a stopover for a few days in hong kong.

Originally Posted by smilee

Is there a rule of thumb when booking Cathay flights using AS points?

I needed to go to New York. The flight from Seattle was 30K in coach. So I decided to look at going from Vancouver on Cathay. Sure enough at BritishAirways.com I was able to find a couple of dates (as we are close to departure) next week that had standard business class (and first class too) available between Vancouver and JFK.

Anyhow looking at Feb 17th for example AS couldn't see anything JFK-YVR for the return in any class of service. So I asked the agent to check other dates and she said the following day the 18th there was availability in business. So I booked it.

British Airways was showing
one business, one first on the 17th
3 business and one first on the 18th.

So the pattern I noticed was there needed to be MORE THAN 1 seat bookable to use my Alaska Miles on Cathay. What do you think???

Then I called up AA and booked using 30K AA points the date (17th) that I wanted. And for data point, AA could see the exact same as BA. Just Alaska couldn't.

Originally Posted by CDKing

ive booked CX flights in F where BA shows 1 seat every time i call. I'm not sure if close in is the problem.

Originally Posted by smilee

Good to know. I am just trying to post information that I see and discover so those of us in the know on Flyertalk can possibly come up with an understanding of the Alaska IT and availability and make best use of our hard earned points.

Originally Posted by gpeso8

I had some mismatch issues today when dealing with a simple booking. I was booking a simple one-way redemption for HKG-LAX in J for August. I was using BA and JL to match availability.

The first flight (and my preferred flight) I asked for showed 3 available seats when searching via BA and JL. The AS rep could not find any seats. The second flight I asked for showed 1 available seat when searching via JL and BA and she was immediately able to find a seat, so I booked that flight.

She seemed competent but I figured I would call back and see if another agent could find a seat on my preferred flight which was still showing 3 available seats in J via BA and JL. I called an additional four times today and none of the reps were able to find availability in J, all were able to see availability in Y on that specific flight.