jinglish

AS typically doesn't seem to have as much award space access as BA or AA do, but every once in a while we have space that they don't. Nobody can find any real rhyme or reason to it.

Are you looking for specific flights? Because there seems to be an issue with late-night CX flights requiring particular search parameters to show up in AS agents' results.

charlied77

Hi, thanks for your help.

One of the flights I was looking at was 12.20am (ish) so does fit this criteria. I would prefer a daytime flight to enjoy F to the fullest but I will take what I can get!

Is there a particular instruction I should pass on to Alaska agents to find this midnight flight?

Cheers

skimthetrees

The agent has to specify a time to find flights close to midnight. Have the agent put in 1AM for the time to search for the 12:20am flight.

I am seeing a mismatch between QF and BA for CX flights in April. Find a CX flight that shows availability on both QF and BA and you should have a good shot to book it. For example, on 4/5 both QF and BA are showing one CX253 Biz seat.

Maybe BA is wrong on this one? You might try using QF search results to check.

pinniped

My plan is to book CX J/F using AS miles for a trip in late '18 or early '19. Today was the first time I briefly went searching for availability, with SFO-HKG my likely long segment.

Am I correct in the general observation that finding 2 J on this route is somewhat easy, but finding 2 F on this route is crazy-hard? I did an Award Nexus search across a couple of random weeks in fall 2018 and found pairs of J seats on *most* flights, but didn't find any F at all. (QF was my source.)

When I do end up booking, I'll have 8-9 months advance notice. I won't complain about J, but dang it'd be nice to get F.

Does playing the T-330 game increase the chance of F? Conversely, is there any reason to think that all of that plentiful-looking J availability isn't actually there for AS redemptions?

reverted

Currently as it stands, there is only F on CX873 SFO-HKG. At T-330 there is 1 x F seat released for awards. Everything else will be held until much closer in to departure.

Because there is only one flight with F, it will be difficult to find/get the seat I assume. Compared to flying out of LAX which has multiple flights a day with an F cabin.

pinniped

Thanks...I didn't know that! Just assumed that long-haul CX was three-cabin across the board.

I'm coming from MCI, so I was only looking SFO to get a nonstop AS flight as part of the same award. But if it was likelier to get 2 F out of LAX, I'd happily throw in the positioning flight on Southwest or whatever to get to it.

reverted

Any CX F route will only release 1 F seat when award seats are made available. The rest of the seats may or may not be released at all until 1-2 weeks from departure.

If you're getting seats for 2 people, most people (including myself) get 1 F and 1 J seat on the same flight and hope that another F seat opens up closer to departure.

Happy

Actually, 3-class cabin would have NO F. It would be Business, Premium Economy and Economy.

It is 4-class cabin that has F but CX would only release 1 F for ANY route that has F service.

Then when much close to departure, between 5 days to literally hours before departure, additional Fs would be released should the F cabin is pretty empty and the business / premium economy / economy not oversold as CX often Opt-up its own elites to higher cabin when their ticketed cabin is oversold.

Since LAX has at least 3 daily flights currently are still served by 4-class aircraft, naturally LAX would have more availability. Still, you will NOT find 2F at the time you start booking, but only 1F. You will see the 2nd or 3rd or 4th F released when it comes much closer to departure.

You can book 1F 1J on same flight and hope to upgrade the J to F when and if additional F is released close in. Or you can book 1F on 2 flights that depart just a few hours apart and you dont mind to fly separately. This is what we normally do, especially we usually only use CX flying back to US - In late August we took the 12:30pm AND the 4:30pm flight HKG-LAX separately with us both in F just not the same flight. I could switch myself from the 4:30 to my husband's 12:30 flight when his flight has wide open F seats (he ended up being the only passenger in F) but that would mean to reissue the ticket with AS which is not very good in doing last minute re-ticketing, plus since we are not AS elites we would need to pay $125 fee I primarily did not want to risk the subsequent AS connecting flights on the re-issue so I just kept the original schedule. No biggie to us because even if we fly together in F, we do not do the dine together thing and we each have our own timetables as to when to eat, when to sleep. After you have flown that enough times, the most important thing would boils down to the comfortable bed as CX foods are generally subpar comparing to its competitors. OTOH, I dont mind to hang out at CX lounges at HKG for extra hours...
From US to HKG we would book 1F 1J as it would be easier to do the change with AS when we still are in US versus when we are out.

Finally the above is purely based on CURRENT situation. Your planned travel is more than a year away, or 18 months from now, there is no way to know if the CURRENT scenario would prevail till then! Hint - CX is cutting F service on all routes just like all other premium airlines.

pinniped

Would AS allow me to do a no-fee change from J to F on the week of the flight? The 1 F + 1 J idea is a pretty good one...

(My status when this happens would probably be the 25k MVP level, if that matters at all.)

CDKing

$125 fee for MVP.

Its only waived if you paid the F price but one of the legs was only available in lower cabin (mixed cabin). If you paid the J price, you have to pay $125 to change to F award.

I'll give you an example. I'm on a QF award. J from JFK-LAX and Y+ LAX-BNE. Since I already paid the J award price, once J opens up on LAX-BNE, no change fee (pretending i'm not gold).

dkerr

You may be running into Point-of-Sale (POS) issues. Airlines can (and do) control inventory based on where the customer is trying to buy the ticket. BA naturally uses London UK as the POS, whereas Alaska (and American) use USA as POS. This can result in different results when it comes to searching for available inventory (whether award or revenue).

It is possible to test this theory. Japan Airlines actually query availability based on their customers country of residence. So you can register for a JAL Mileage Bank account with a UK address, and then register for a separate account with a USA address. You can login and search for CX award availability using your JAL account, which is usually a good proxy for what AA and AS can see... but they will only see what what you can see if logged in with your USA JAL account. I have tested this in the past and it does seem that CX uses POS to control inventory availability especially for their Europe routes.

DAK

percysmith

BA definitely does POS https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...l#post26438637

Truth777

ORD-SYD

Can I book that as 1 award or is it two awards? If one award, anyone know the cost of F?

Thanks.

eponymous_coward

One award. 80k for F. North America-Australia is one award on the AS charts. Have you tried using them?

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mi...s/award-charts

Note that the HKG-SYD segment will be in J (CX does not fly four cabin planes with F to Australia/NZ).

Truth777

Nice thanks. Bummer there is no F.