Cthunder86

Plenty of a availability when I looked as well. It’s the middle of June so you can’t really expect to find saver awards for the UK/US when it’s the high season and June/August a month away

kileysmom

Hi, first, those are three of the most popular travel months...October because that is when UK schools on are what is usually a half term break. What website are you logging onto? What is your departure airport from the US to London? You probably need to plan on looking at every BA departure airport in the country to be honest. Also you do not have to return to the same US airport. Plan on positioning flights. It's a many hour search sometimes... I messed with it for three weeks and finally got ATL to LHR in F the first week of Nov. back in April. Keep rechecking because once in awhile some mileage seats drop into the inventory.

SEA777GUY

I even tried Qatar through DOH but noticed that they have increased O/W redemptions in J to 170+ well into next year.

VegasGambler

If their inventory out to October was spoken for several months ago then that's a problem.

Some flexibility is required but if there is literally nothing for months then obviously enough is not being released. This has not been a problem in past years (getting a saver award to the gateway has never been the hard part of booking partner awards) and it's not a problem on other domestic airlines now (I can't really speak for DL but I've had no problem finding what I needed on AA or UA). AS is the only airline where I'm paying to get to/from the partner gateway. Combined with the lack of multi-partner awards, it really reduces the value of AS miles.

enzian

All of the options shown in the J column are mixed cabin (undoubtedly with the long-haul,segment not in J), apart from the 2 flights using RoyalAir Moroc.

VegasGambler

Fair point, and noted upthread. But the original complaint was that there was no availability, even in Y, for UK-US. But actually there is Y availability UK-US every single day. US-US (gateway -> home) might be a different story.

Honestly it is very late to expect to find summer J availability between the US and Europe. There was plenty available on AY up until a couple of months ago but that's mostly been taken now. I was actually shocked by how much there was.

eponymous_coward

I can assure you PHX often doesn’t have great award availability on AS, and that’s been a thing for a while (and it’s better on AA/DL, because DL is still doing the “we’re in second and we try harder” thing on ex-SEA routes, and AA tends to not get great revenue premiums out of PHX the way AS does in SEA). You’re seeing it more now out of PHX because it’s a spoke (and UA and AA have MUCH better connectivity PHX-SFO/LAX).

AS being tight-fisted with saver at times isn’t anything new.

Alaska Air MAJOR ISSUE? No saver award space!

(one of umpteen bajillion gripe threads)

AS implementing what is in effect revenue based Y/F redemptions on their own metal (by inflating the miles requirements way past saver) is old enough to have white whiskers in airline devaluation terms.

VegasGambler

i understand that. I would be happy finding availability to/from SFO or LAX so I could pay for a relatively short/cheap flight hop to/from PHX (or burn a few AA miles on a cheap web special) But that's not available either.

It seems worse this year. This is just my perception.

But all airlines do that. The thing about dynamic pricing is that it's supposed to cut both ways. AA has plenty of domestic awards at overly-inflated prices but they also have plenty of saver awards, and web specials that are cheaper than saver awards (which I've started booking lately)