Originally Posted by
mooreva
We are returning to LA from a three-month cruise on December 21, 2018 and will be flying home to TPA. Knowing that was a prime season, I started looking on January 24th for any MS seats to TPA . None. No business class; no economy class. Just economy anytime at 65k or business anytime at 90k. Can we expect to see milesaver seats eventually released, or are we relegated to spending 130k for economy or shelving out $700 for a ticket or that date? I'm thinking that it is back to EF time.
Being the Friday before xmas I think saver inventory will be tough to come by. My folks live in Tampa and I flew ORD-TPA the Friday before xmas this year. I set an EF alerts and it became available in early February during a schedule change when they opened the award floodgates for about 4 hours. Unless you catch one of those releases I think it will be tough....especially since there is no non-stop. I had set another Ef alert for my flight for my brother and it never opened up the rest of the year.
Is flying into MCO an option? AS has 6 seats available for 12.5k on the non-stop LAX-MCO on 12/21. I can't imagine a one way car rental would be too bad. It departs at 11am so might be too early depending on cruise disembarkation. But if not it's a decent option.