That is around the same time that AA announced the season service only to many Euro destinations. maybe it is tied in with that in some way

What's the destination you're trying in "Southern Europe"?

I've been monitoring FCO milesavers and they're currently loaded until April 12. But last night I checked LHR for another FTer and saw that those milesavers were loaded until April 28. So based on just this, it seems that the timing (314 days out vs 330 days out) varies by destination. Maybe your destination is now holding back until it's in sync with the 314 days out? (You need a divining rod to understand this stuff!)


SK3...I have reading your posts and also monitoring availability to major cities for the past several weeks. We also want to go to FCO...however, will also be happy with Barcelona, Milan (or Perhaps Madrid). All of these cities are a short and inexpensive hop to FCO.

By Southern cities, I really meant every city except those in UK. I was also thinking that it could be a change from 330 days out to 314. FCO has always lagged behind other so perhaps they want to sync them up.

Hopefully, that is the case...and we do need a divining rod!

I've been looking for tickets to Rome in late April/Early may as well. It now appears there is availability through April 23rd for most cities (FRA, MXP, MAD, BRU) but today May 3 & 4 also showed up. However, FCO is only open through April 17th.

If the domestic connection I will need to get the the international filght is unavailable as an award, does that mean I am pretty much screwed since it is taking so long for these flights to become available?

"I've been looking for tickets to Rome in late April/Early may as well. It now appears there is availability through April 23rd for most cities (FRA, MXP, MAD, BRU) but today May 3 & 4 also showed up. However, FCO is only open through April 17th.

If the domestic connection I will need to get the the international filght is unavailable as an award, does that mean I am pretty much screwed since it is taking so long for these flights to become available?"




I am not an expert on this..however, I have been following these flights on Expert Flyer. I appears to me that they might make a very small number of additional domestic seats available for these delayed international routings.

You might want to put your domestic seats on the five day hold and maybe try to stretch out the hold by calling customer service.

We have to fly to Rome on a specific date within what appears to be the 20K total blackout period...we have made backup reservations via London then BAC onward to Rome. BAC is a partner and they do have seats available to be used as part of the 20K awards. You have to call customer service to book these awards.

Dissapointed with AA award availability vs. UA
 

I am looking to book 6 one way awards between ORD and Texas. UA has nonstop availability on all 6 of those days. AA has nonstop availability on none of those days and connecting availability on only one of those days. I used to think that AA had the best domestic award availability but lately it has seemed that UA is far ahead.

Oct. 7 ORD-IAH
Oct 11 IAH-ORD
Nov 24 ORD-DFW
Nov. 29 DFW-ORD
Dec. 22 ORD-DFW
Jan. 2 IAH-ORD

I've seen the same, though partially because on UA I see the NY award bucket (coach awards just for 1Ks) whereas no such thing exists in a meaningful way for EXPs.

OTOH, I find AA to have better availability when it comes to own metal int'l premium cabins when compared with UA and I find partner availability to be roughly the same (excepting that there's no *A equivalent for a CX F award since SQ blocks everything and NH isn't quite CX).

Only a 10% difference according to the report discussed in this thread.

Are you basing that entirely on your ORD-Texas search, or many others, as well?

OP, is it safe to assume you are looking for MileSAAver coach award tickets for 12,500 miles? The reason I ask is that I see plenty of non-stops available on Oct 7 and Oct 11 for 25K (both MileSAAver in First, and AAnytime in coach). I didn't check the other dates.

FWIW...I have had the same experience over the lat year or so. Milesaaver inventory is very hard to find going to anywhere in Europe and Hawaii is getting there also. I have been EXP since 2002, and it has never been more difficult to redeem miles for milesaaver awards while redemption levels have risen consistently. Not all that long ago, Euope was 40k off-peak and 50k peak. HI used to be 25k to LIH/KOA/OGG on AA metal. That went to 35k, and now it's 45k.

Over periods where school is out (like end of May through end of August or mid-Dec through mid-Jan, AA no longer makes milesaaver awards available at 330 days out. I have looked on and off for Europe (for purely academic reasons), and it was no use. They block the entire time periods off for milesaaver and only randomly make inventory available sometime before departure.

All these tactics might be "revenue enhancing" in the short-term but they make it impossible to plan a vacation well in advance at the mileage level that I consider "value". Paying 120k miles per ticket to London, when I can pay $900 for said ticket is no value at all.

In the long-term, AA will erode the usefulness of its program and the goodwill it garners if ease of redemption continues to deteriorate. I have spoen with many an AA Angel and they have all confessed to have noticed the same trend and that many an elite is complaining about it these days.

Although I have no xperience redeeming from UA (at least not recently), I have found CO's Star availability (their own metal is worse than AA) to be much better than AAs availability including its partners. This is one area where AA is sliding behind CO and UA.

My 2 cents. YMMV.

It will be interesting to see what happens to their award availability after the CO-UA merger. The folks on the DL board don't seem too happy with availability post-merger.

Yes. I am looking for 12.5K coach awards.

My searches have been mostly ORD-Texas as that is what I have been looking for.

I did end up having to steal 110K CO miles from my brother because AA was unable to get me to Greece this summer and CO was.

I did search ORD-SEA for a recent trip and was unsuccessful. I ended up using a WN award. I was able to travel on an AA award in may from ORD-EWR. In general my experience is showing that peak demand dates are blocked by AA 330 days out and never seem to open up. UA has made seats available for days like Dec 22 and Jan 2, but you probably have to be reasonable early to get them.

Nothing to do with availability though - DL never had it to begin with. The merger took away an excellent award booking tool on nwa.com that allowed easy multipartner searches and replaced it with DL site which on the scale of usefulness falls somewhere between unrecyclable garbage and untreated sewage.

And yes on average UA does have better domestic award availability vs AA and of course DL.

My impression is more that old DL folks are noticing no change. Its the old NW folks that are unhappy because the have to deal with DL style capacity control.

My guess here is that UA management will be running most things so hopefully we will see capacity control UA style which will mean CO flights open up a lot. If its the opposite and future UA availability is like CO today then that will be sorely dissappointing.

At least star provides so many options that something is generally available on international awards.

As a 14 year DL pre-merger elite (9 of those Plat, and 6 of those simultaneously elite on NW) I can tell you that the award availability situation at DL started worsening before the merger when they sold several bazillion SkyMiles to Amex. It really went into the toilet after the merger, but I'm not sure the merger was the main reason. The NW award availability and (especially) the website booking software were indeed far, far better than DL's. SkyMiles are like Zimbabwe currency now, IMHO. I left for AA and my only regret is that the IFE on DL was far better than AA. I have had no trouble getting Saver AAwards in and out of my home base in Hawaii, and I usually get the days I want by booking between 90 and 150 days out. YMMV, as always.

That's not my impression, though there seem to be a few DL apologists who are in denial. :)

There were some recent news articles which also found challenges with trying to book a DL award at decent redemption rates.