pentiumvi

So I've been planning an upcoming mini-rtw booking and have been noting down how far in advance award seats from different airlines are released to Aeroplan (based on searched done on Aeroplan site).

I thought this might be useful for others as well, as I haven't seen this info posted elsewhere on this forum (I may have missed it.)

Also, these are just data from my own research, may not be 100% accurate. Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken about any of these.

BR : 355 days
CA: 355 days
AC: 355 days
OZ: 342 days
NH: 330 days
TG: 340 days
SQ: 350 days
LH: 350 days - F release at ~T-14, J unknown.
LX: 339 days
OS: 355 days
UA: 330 days
TK: 355 days
LO: 355 days

To clarify, these dates are just "typical" dates, as in the first date you should expect to start seeing award availability from a specific airline (not specific to Y/J/F - I've seen on occasion F being released on day 1, but no J/Y etc.).
To my knowledge, only LH withholds J/F until closer to departure.

This does not necessarily mean that you'll find award space right on those dates though. Airlines release award seats at their discretion, and additional seats my be released closer to departure date.

yyznomad

Cool. Maybe you should start a wiki for this.

jerryhung

Thanks

I have it in my thread also, will add in few that are missed

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...demptions.html

PursuitTraveller

Hi All,

We're planning on going to Asia in December and wondering how early should we book our flights on Aeroplan? The time frame would be from mid to late December. I know the norm is as "early as possible" but the Aeroplan rep I spoke with said that the reward seats are introduced throughout the year and that booking a year in advance theory is a myth?

Would love to hear experiences from travelers that have booked flights during the holiday season and how early were the booking made?

Thanks!

pitz

360 days out, AC releases the contractual minimum of seats to AP, ie: a seat or two every flight. Which are promptly snatched up. Periodically inventory is added or subtracted thereafter to balance actual redemptions against AC's contractual obligations to AP.

Other carriers have different algorithms on what inventory they expose, based on their own internal FFPs and usually further reduced to rectify imbalances between AC/AP and their program's reciprocal redemption priviliges. But the general rule of thumb is that if you see something that would work for you, you should grab it.

Being able to redeem more than 2 seats on a given flight would be considered fairly uncommon (although not unheard of), so you should be prepared to buy additional seats as revenue seats or split the family up. Your proposed travel is during one of the busiest times of the season, and as such, aside from the contractual "minimum seats" (which would be all long gone at this point), AC may very well not expose much if any additional inventory. In short, "don't get your hopes up", and "act quickly" are the best pieces of advice that can be rendered.

echino

longtimeflyin

It depends on the airline. Several carriers only release inventory at T-14 days.

yyznomad

@pentiumvi

Your OP is for X only, correct? Maybe also N (whatever reward fare class is for PE) and J/C (I)? But not F (O), right?

pentiumvi

It's for general release for the listed airlines, with some exceptions which I failed to mention in my OP. I'll update.

nexusCFX

It's definitely not a myth if you really need seats on a specific route. I just booked an April/May 2019 trip to Japan. Much like OP I'd been monitoring the releases for about a month prior, and I saw that an I class seat was released at midnight EST on YYZ-HND and HND-YYZ 355 days out, actually became bookable at 3am EST, and not long after they disappeared. That being said, it's not impossible to find availability without staying up late 355 days out. For example, in my case I'm seeing a few days most months with I availability on my YYZ-HND route, so hopefully something similar would be there for you.

Also something to keep in mind is that if you want to book right when seats are released, you're inevitably going to lose out on the stopover perks for round trips because you have to book the outbound and return trip individually. You also can't connect on carriers that don't release until after another one does.

jc94

I thinks wiki would be good on top of this thread with specific exceptions for say J space included.

I don’t seem able to add a wiki on my phone but will do it if no one else has in a while (days) if I remember

mjrobson

My concern these days is not "when airlines start releasing seats" to AP, it's "IF they're going to keep releasing seats" to AP.

I had planned out a nice award for 2 which would have got us F on NH (ORD->NRT), TG(NRT-BKK), OZ(ICN-LAX), SQ(SIN-CGK) and J for some segments on SQ(MLE-SIN) OZ(CGK-ICN) and AC(YYZ-ORD)... With no more awards available for OZ and the extreme drop in TG space now, it's not possible to book!

Trying to figure out the best alternative and burn the last 450k we have.

msiamsia

Might be a bit different from straight Aeropoint, I had my 2016 summer (early to mid August, round trip YYZ - NRT) ticket booked thru United Milage plus on a AC metal. And the seats were released from Air Canada to Mileage plus in March of the same year.
​​​I am checking everyday now for our summer one way ticket on Air Canada metal as we speak. AC gives us the best schedule for out connection.
​​​​

laddielad

Anyone know if they typically have a schedule on how many days out they will release to AP? Looking for JNB - SIN direct flights but can't find any except for a couple of dates for this August... looking more for 2019.

Same with Turkish flights, trying to find direct IST to JNB but no where to be found at all!

peanutgirl