Originally Posted by
Finsup72
No. AA doesn't release any valuable C space on long distance routes until 36-48 hours before departure and therefore makes it very hard to plan long-distance vacations (even if the seat map is empty and ExpertFlyer shows >J7). You can certainly find readily available C space on a short-haul American Eagle flight though!
While C space in advance is certainly hard to find, it's definitely 100% not true that AA doesn't release
any space at all until close in.
Asia is much harder to find in advance than Europe these days, especially with most Asia flying on smaller business cabin 787's. But it's not that hard at all to find C space to/from Europe in the Fall and Winter.
For example, looking now at EF for JFK-LHR and LHR-JFK, I see TONS of C space for pretty much all of Oct and Nov. Also spot checking a few other random routes I see C space on JFK-MXP, MIA-MXP, PHL-AMS, PHL-MAN, JFK-CDG, just to name a few. This was looking at random weeks in Oct. and Nov.