Been trying to find seats for a client to fly HKG-MAD-HKG early next year, either prem econ upgrading to business, or just business (same thing availability wise). Very flexible with the dates, but no use at all. Can fly any time from mid Jan, wants a 3 week stay, and come back by end of Feb. Nothing available on any dates that will work for this, despite the flights being wide open in all classes on all dates pretty much.
I explained to him that with the changes to redeeming tickets, CX have basically become more greedy, and for a lot of routes where you could book far in advance easily, now they won't allow redemption until very close to the date of the flight when they have not sold many seats and are desperate to shift some.
This of course is a horrible situation for anyone to be in, when this client is very well organised and is booking quite far ahead, and he has enough miles for 4 business class tickets for himself, wife, and 2 children. Now though the last minute hunters or un-organised people seem to have a better chance of redeeming, most likely a few days before the flights, but of course my client cannot wait until mid Jan and 'hope' he can get 4 seats, he wants to book the trip now, book the time off work, and secure the hotel bookings etc.
Similarly the same client had a ticket recently HKG-JFK-HKG in prem econ wanting to upgrade to business, couldn't do it returning, all flights full +/- 3 days, despite I/D/C/J all wide open showing 9 seats, but when he then had to change dates at the last minute returning for JFK-HKG, there were 2 or 3 flights available for business redemption/upgrade on every day over the next few days, so it was again apparent that only then CX were happy to offer the seats, as they did not think they would be able to sell them in the next 24 hours.
I will have enough miles by the end of this year to redeem my tickets to the UK for Christmas 2019, but I am fairly sure that even when I try to redeem them in Jan, being one of the first people to book so far ahead, I will probably see waitlist only on the AM site. I certainly don't want to waitlist, I want to lock in guaranteed seats, as each day that passes with flights waitlisted, all other dates that I am flexible enough to book are generally getting busier and busier!
A couple of months back I tried booking around end of Feb, to go anywhere in Asia really where I could book tickets for me and the wife, avoiding Chinese new year dates of course. The only city I could get was Siem Reap, so booked that and looking forward to it. Again for all other cities that we fancied, despite it being random dates not close to public holidays, it was showing as waitlist for everything.