Originally Posted by
elhombre
thanks for this. I'm wondering if any other airline is better? Do they wait until the last minute to release flights? I've never flown business or first class before, except domestic flights.
AA has all sorts of random award space release patterns. If you can book 10-11 months out, then you might find a few seats here and there. In the peak summer season to Europe, availability between about 10 months out to 1 month out is generally pretty terrible, which is exactly when you're looking now. AA sometimes releases random batches of premium award space, its always completely unpredictable and tends to be gobbled up pretty quickly. Once you get within a month, you might see a few more seats open up, but again it's unpredictable and traveling in May peak season will hurt your chances (if you were traveling in Sep-Nov or Jan-Mar then your chances would be much better of last minute space opening up).
As to other airlines, you will typically see a lot more first and business award space on BA to LHR, but of course this comes with the ripoff fuel surcharges. If you can get any United miles, availability is generally much better using UA in premium cabins to/from Europe as there are tons more options using *Alliance.