Originally Posted by
Keyser.Soze
I've been trying to book a one way award LAX - DXB - MXP flight in 1st class in August 2019 for quite some time. However, every single date in August has 1st class locked out for award bookings. Is this because 11 months is too far in advance or am I too late to the party here? Trying to figure out the optimal time to try to book or if I need to just book the business class version of this now and pray that a 1st class spot opens that I can use more miles to upgrade to.
The business class route in total is ~ 137k miles + $580 USD in fees.
I'd be fine going business class for the DXB - MXP leg but would really want 1st for the LAX - DXB leg.
Welcome to the EK Forum!
LAX-DXB, in my experience, has only one first class seat allocated to awards and if even one person books a revenue ticket, they remove that award seat from inventory.
European routes in August are going to be killer hard as well, I looked for availability this year and the month of August had no awards available for MXP in J or F, so if you see J (really, D) inventory I'd grab it!
I'd invest in a ExpertFlyer subscription if I were you, you can set alerts for award availability there and get texted/emailed when it appears. I'm hoping my LAX-DXB segment in a few days gets a buzz...