TK blocking J?
 

Is Turkish the latest to start blocking J seats? They used to be wide open last year, and I've been searching 2 x YYZ-IST and I can't find a thing in June, July, or August.

First SQ then , LH & LX, and the list goes on.

Soon all we'll be left with is MS and UA.

I just booked 2 J seats YYZ-IST for mid-July. There were actually 3 seats available for redemption on my date.

The return is a different history. No availability IST-YYZ during the dates I wanted, but plenty of Y availability on the new AC non-stop. Thanks, but no thanks.

These are not easy to get...people have caught on.
BTW LH and LX don't block J availability (SQ only blocks access to their premium planes)

last week, I had booked two seats on TK in J bom-ist-yyz for next December which changed yesterday to LX. It does not seem that they block seats and likely just availability on your dates.!!

I flew the YYZ-IST flight on TK I think 3 times last year. I never had any problems trying to get it.

This year I started checking in January, couldn't find anything until October.

They may not be blocking it but I think they reduced availability severely. I had to switch to LOT and now.... 787 fiasco.

I booked PVG-IST-IAD in J on TK yesterday for early June.

LX is now blocking F though I believe.

Never was a problem finding LX as long as you wanted to look 7-10 months ahead.

Now, it's gone.

As we have come to understand in the air travel business, they do not roll out anything new or beneficial. Every year is just finding the low hanging fruit so they can cut it off.

Today's F blocking and J availability reduction is tomorrow's cuts.

It's easy to envision when we have no F availability or the fees go up to 75% of the purchased ticket prices, and J is impossible to book on anything but the "native" carrier's seats.

I don't quite understand how these carriers can operate in an alliance where everyone gets to pick their own rules in terms of what's available to redeem and get points on. Seems to be only a gesture towards an alliance, just basically code sharing and a mutual agreement to ignore the priority tags on luggage.

I think the simple answer is : June, July, August. A very busy time. Just booked TK reward travel in April, and came across several available dates.

That has been the case for *A partners for more than a year now, except for two months last summer when LifeMiles was mistakenly given a back door to M&M inventory.
LX F seats are still available on many flights to M&M members, if you have those miles.

Yes, I am kind of implying that. Each one of these airlines seems more inclined to circle the wagons around their own members and restrict availability at this point.

So I'm starting to question the utility of the alliance for top tier redemption. It's the cutting edge of the bleeding. Today they block F and cut back on J. Tomorrow they block J and cut back on PE (after introducing PE). After that, block PE and make E available. After that... just basically we will check your luggage through.

Lounge use? 75k and up. 100k and up.

Priority checkin / boarding has gone the other direction where they gave it out to so many people that half of the plane boards during "priority", so they'll keep dishing it out until everyone is boarding at the same time. Then of course, the introduction of "Super Priority".

It's a treadmill.

My last F on LX was in November, and I booked that one about 8 months beforehand. That I guess is my last F experience on LX.

I'm trying to wring out every last drop while I can. It's clear where all this stuff is going though, and there is no turning back.

I don't necessarily agree that it is becoming more difficult to redeem F seats. It's just that the rules have changed and one needs to be flexible. Yes, LX is gone but LH is still available if you don't mind waiting until T-14 to change your UA to LH. I just booked JFK-NRT in NH First on UA.com. EK First is now available thru AS. SQ First and SQ Suites are now available using KF miles with an Amex/SPG transfers... recently book 4 Suites tickets. On OW, CX First is routinely available using BA/AA, and BA First is available if you book well in advance.

So... one entire carrier is gone. But it's not more difficult to book F?

The carrier that left is the one that has no scamcharges. But it's not more difficult (costly) to book F?

LH is available if you want to book UA and then institute a switch. But it's not more difficult to book F?

So... by definition there, you pointed out three ways in which F availability is going downward but you maintain that F booking is not more difficult? It sounds like cheerleading to me.

As for oneworld/KF/BA etc., I don't see the point of talking about them on an Aeroplan forum. I'll talk about those in those forums, if I had any of their points. Which I don't. And I don't have enough SPG points to make a difference with any of them. Nor do most people posting in the Aeroplan forum.

If that's how you read it, so be it. But there are still lots of ways to get First award seats on the dates when you want to travel.
I can't help it if you are unwilling to expand your horizons beyond Aeroplan. In the end, you can always buy an F ticket. ;)

I booked a seat last week for YYZ-IST-BKK on TK in J for January 2014 using Aeroplan miles (the return IST-YYZ is on AC) I believe there was only one seat though as when I was looking at alternatives flight later just to pass time I noticed there was no availability on TK for the dates I had purchased.

Not so easy to get UA in Canada... and also no transfers to SQ from AMEX CA.
Oh, and you need a heck of a lot of miles for AS on ek.

SO BE IT

According to #777 there is just fine availability on TK if you are willing to use Cathay points to fly on BA.

Logic!

Booked in early January for Oct/Nov 2 x J IST-CPT/JNB-IST-ASR-IST as part of a *A trip to ZA. Needed to work it a bit, but lots available.

No TK via YYZ, some AC, but no domestic J to YYZ. Even Y to YYZ is Clasic+ for most of 2013.

Never found LH or SA in J for a 2 month window to ZA. Did find SA via EZE and GRU though.

The secret is to book TK IAD-IST.

I was searching last month for an African Reward and there was a TON of it for flights 250-300 days out in both directions.

No or limited availability ORD-IST and YYZ-IST.

I managed to book a J seat on TK for May, albeit using my MP miles: YYZ-IST-TXL. This was a month ago. (Paid 50K miles and $56 but not sure what an AE award would cost.) I think it's just that TK is doing good business filling its premium seats ex-YYZ. But agree with others, check out the US gateways TK uses and you're more than likely to find a J seat.

IAD-IST is freely available because it's using their A340, which has the angled seat in J. ORD-IST is on the A330, and YYZ-IST is on the 77W, which are lie-flat.

LH and LX block J until T-14 (more like T-3 based on my experience), which is bloody inconvenient for all but the most flexible/masochistic travellers.

SQ J is next to impossible unless it's a short flight you're looking for.

I only joined AP a few years ago. Since that time, let's recap the enhancements:

1) Huge fuel surcharges on AC and LH.
2) Point devaluation.
3) Elimination of LX F.
4) LH J/F and LX J available only T-x.
5) Less availability of TK J (I swear, it was always wiiiiiiide open to/from YYZ before).

Instead of just whining about it though, I've shifted the majority of my 6 figure monthly CC spend to my AX SPG card, which I'm going to use to transfer to airlines such as JAL to redeem EK F. I've also started buying AA miles when they have promos because I can use them for CX J and F. Just got a CX J ticket YYZ-HKG RT and it was so sweet to pay next to nothing in taxes and "fuel surcharges".

I'm still sitting on over a million AP miles though, will probably redeem them for TG F, which I find the best value in the entire program right now.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B179 Safari/7534.48.3)

Watch out with booking TK J using AP miles. From my experience, TK will oversell J and waitlist confirmed J award ticket holders. Total crap. Luckily, AP had also booked me for the wrong date due to an invol sched change (long story) and so accommodated me in confirmed J on another carrier.

TL; DR: Babysit your TK J Aeroplan ticket and check on it daily leading up to departure.

Not trying to defend AP in any way but
3, 4, and 5 are *A wide.
1 I hate. 2 I sorta agree with but then they had the best award chart of all the airlines just over two years ago, so it sort of balances out.
Earn and burn.

I just saw: 6 figure MONTHLY spend! That's intense.

I booked IST-NRT on TK in J for August a couple of months ago. They seem to release 3 seats in J per flight and 4 on BKK-IST flights. Oddly enough, there has been ZERO seats released for August on the LHR-IST route in J or Y. So right now I have LHR-ZRH-IST-NRT on LX/TK but I keep checking for the LHR-IST direct flight to open.

Are people still finding that Turkish Airlines isn't granting seat requests until about 100 days out?

I'll call after the weekend is over just to try, but the bumping award J off is another worrying issue.