What time of day does aa.com update award inventory?
 

I know this has to have been asked somewhere, but neither google nor I can seem to find it. Please merge with the appropriate thread if necessary.

What time of day does AA update their award inventory on their website? I had previously seen that it was "sometime in the early morning" (between 2-5 AM CST). But more recently I read a report that it's actually updated twice a day - just after midnight and noon CST. Unfortunately, none of the routes I'm currently tracking have had any real change in availability recently, so I don't have much data to go on.

Obviously availability can change throughout the day, as people reserve and release seats, but I'm talking about the time when AA themselves release their major changes for the day. Any clue?

I dunno about major changes, but I have seen inventory I released show up on the website immediately. I recommend an expert flyer alert to ensure you don't miss something!

Interesting ... I hope you find some concrete information as I've never seen it here (unless it was buried in some thread). My guess though is the answer is dynamic.

AA has been lately either opening the spout and dumping a lot of inventory or closing it up completely. I know they are trying to do a better job releasing award space but at what time of the day or when is still a crap shoot in my experience.

Here is one piece of information, though more relates to dumping inventory very close to departure. On a J award, I was booked into Y for a domestic leg. This particular flight was on a 787, so there was always plenty of F seats that went unsold. Tracking this flight with ExpertFlyer on previous weeks, 'Z' inventory always opened up about 7-8 hours prior to the EXP upgrade window.

As this was a heavy elite route, I was able to get in, and get my ticket changed prior to these seats being gobbled up by upgraders. Although, upgrade inventory comes from a different bucket, I got the impression that they were somewhat tied together, as Z would quickly disappear after the window opened. A upgrade not only reduced upgrade inventory, but Z as well.

Interesting. So you consistently saw business inventory open up ~107-108 hours before departure? And just to clarify - when you talk about first on the 787, you do mean business, right? I'm not seeing any AA 787s with 3 classes.

Not exactly the question I was asking, but very, very useful information. Thanks.

The OP was referencing a domestic flight, so that would be B788 business class cabin marketed as F.

I have even a further question.

Is aaward inventory released automatically by a computer program?

Or is there someone pushing a button when he gets in the office? :)

There's always a computer program involved.

Someone may push a button to cause a new day's worth of inventory to be loaded at 331 days out, perhaps, or to declare a particular flight have new rules which in this case happen to increase availability, but the bulk of the decisions are made by computer algorithms directed by complex Revenue Management rules set up in advance.

Sometimes Revenue Management can release an award seat for you if you're an EXP and a phone EXP agent requests that, so in that case they may be pushing a button. But that's a special case.

This post is a few years old - it may be relevant or might not be.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/21056468-post3882.html

Having just spent a few sleepless nights (successfully) chasing AA award tickets, my experience revealed the following:

AA awards on USA domestic flights become available right at midnight central time. AA awards on partner flights TN and FJ become available at approximately 2am central time. YMMV.

Any idea when they post cx

Award inventory is very dynamic for the most part, could be instantaneous if an award is cancelled by someone, the space immediately appears in the inventory just as normal revenue seats may reopen when cancellations or changes are made. Otherwise, AA and partner airlines can release additional inventory at any time based on their forecasting future revenue demand, or lack thereof on specific routes/class. Other than loading the 330th day (or whatever AA's advance window is), don't know there's any fixed time factor.

For AA it is 331 days.
But they don't necessarily open aaward seats 331 days in advance for all flights. That's a myth.

Try LAX-LHR or LAX-SYD at 331 days out and it never opens up, it is not that someone else took your seat. They just don't open those seats until much later.

It does, somewhat surprisingly, look like availability is released at some points during the day as well - perhaps noon? I checked a route I've been tracking at 5 AM CST today, and just checked again (7 PM CST), and there's significantly more space available than there was this morning. This morning there were about 8 flights, including 1 direct, with 2 seats available. Now there are 16, including 2 direct.

FWIW, the same 8 flights that were available this morning had been available for the past week or so. The date is this Saturday, so we're 5 days out at this point. Not really on topic, but worth noting.

Looking for this information I came upon the old thread.

What I also found looking at BA award seats using the AA.com is that they load the seats sometime after midnight for 331 days out but if a connecting flight is 332 days out...even though they show the award ....when you click on it a notice comes up saying that award is " no longer available".... just their way of saying you are a day too early to book the whole itinerary.