eponymous_coward

Revenue? From an award booking? Nobody is going to be making much money from award bookings. Nobody is going to want to run routes that lose buckets of cash because someone wants to spend some Alaska miles to go from Europe to Sapporo in business class. Be realistic. You're wasting a bunch of time trying to fix things now because the schedules published now for January are very unlikely to be the same schedules that exist in December. So are you going to keep calling in over and over again everyone keeps adjusting schedules by cancelling flights? Why is waiting until close in when you can have a reasonable shot of knowing an exact schedule you can ask for not reasonable? People book award travel close in this way all the time, as I'm sure you're aware from your experience in the travel industry.

PS: AS doesn't do multi-partner awards. So good luck asking for some mutant AY-BA-JL award (or whatever) from them.

By all means, use the "report post" button if you'd like to play tone police, but I think trying to fix itineraries months out when the schedules are very obviously fictional is wasting time. It is assuming certainty in working out solutions that doesn't exist, because those flights may well not actually exist in a few months.

Flying Yazata

I just wanted to highlight that the OP isn't the only one here who found it to be unwarranted aggressiveness. Just saying his perception isn't just his, but shared by at least me as well. As for what's time wasting in this case, I think it's perfectly plausible to start working out is the trip still doable or not. That way one can at least give up waiting and do something else then in 2021, if it looks like there's no plausible options for getting the award booking fixed. It's all about foresight. As for what to plot now, my solution was pretty dependable, unless for some reason immigration reasons prohibit it or it wouldn't work out with AY.

eponymous_coward

Like I said, AS doesn't do multi-partner awards, nor do they allow JL to be used Europe-Japan, so anything involving CTS now that AY has cut the HEL-CTS nonstop is going to be an undertaking of getting either AS to violate their stated policies (to issue a ticket they don't typically allow), or for something like AY to take over the ticket so they can fix it (or pray that CX reinstitutes the HKG-CTS route I guess so CX LHR-HKG-CTS is possible). Plenty of time where everyone gets to point fingers at each other.

And then 6 months later everyone can do this exercise all over again when AY/JL/BA/whoever cancels flights and the schedule is actually "real", and the itinerary needs to be fixed all over again. My inclination would be to do this exercise once reasonably close in when the travel date is quite a ways out (and by then you should know things like "Japan will actually allow tourists"), but OP should do OP I reckon.

Mister P.

Hi, has anyone been able to find any award space (J) on any of Finnair LH routes for July 2020, with its new schedule? Looking in particular at SIN-HEL; NRT-HEL and HKG-HEL. Thanks.

NoLaGent

Award space is released to Alaska 330 days prior to travel date. Depending upon your dates, that'll likely be sometime in August.

Edit: I apologize, I shouldn't read before having coffee. Now that I'm awake, I see you're asking about THIS July. And no, I can't find anything either.

Mister P.

Thanks. Yes, I was referring to next month.

VFR

As of this January, it seems that Finnair restricts partner business class awards to 60 days before departure (source).

Mister P.

Thanks. Again, I was referring to July 2020 (next month). It seems that Finnair has not released / is blocking award space (J) at least in their long haul flights set to resume at that point.

mike28

Depending on where you need to go, you can try EI.
Just booked a business award on EI for August with no surcharges (unlike BA ...)

eponymous_coward

Since when does AS let you fly Asia-Europe awards on EI? OP I think is trying to cobble Australia-Europe together in July using AS miles, based on post history.

OP: I think you should just bite the bullet and either book Y, just pay cash or use another program. Is your objective actual travel or is AS award travel in longhaul J an absolute requirement?

Mister P.

Thanks. Trying to find a way to get back to Europe. Finnair happens to offer the best combinations (if they go ahead with their proposed new schedule).

eponymous_coward

I'd probably lock in Y now and see if the J opens up later. Good luck.

svellmann

I just redeemed AS miles on AY for KEF-HEL-DUS (in Y) but unfortunately have no way of telling what the baggage allowance is, even when I pull up the booking on finnair.com. The field is just empty which I guess does not necessarily mean I have zero allowance. Does anyone have experience on baggage allowance on intra-Europe Y redemptions with AY?

spgaston

Regarding Phantom availability...
I'm trying to reschedule a trip for next summer...booking ~330 days out. Both AS and Expert Flyer don't show married segment availability SFO-(HEL)-TXL, FRA-(HEL)-SFO. But when performing a multi-city itinerary, or segment to segment search, both AS and Expert Flyer show availability. But when I go to book using multi-city, I get an error at the very end (payment) saying that there was a problem and I should search again. Is there any way around this? Would >24 hour stopover in HEL trick the system into breaking married segment restrictions?

vanillabean

I see one-way HND-HEL-SFO July 5 with <24 hours layover for a mere 50K, which I have had my eye on for some time, so sometimes it works.