stephem

nearly every bucket paid fare bucket showing 9. Seat map shows nearly entirely empty eco cabin and 20 something empty biz seats. If you get one week out and it looks like this i would say your chances are excellent. You may have to wait until 3-5 days before flight to see the biz seats released tho.

metoo

Thanks for checking Stephen.

DDResq

Are J awards still being made regularly available in the last 14 days before flights?

I'm searching for availability on CX845 from JFK to HKG on 1/6 and see plenty of J space on ExpertFlyer but nothing on BA. A quick search for the same route between tomorrow and 1/6 shows pretty much the same thing on most flights (EF availability but nothing on BA) and I don't know if this is an anomaly or a trend.

Any help or guidance is greatly appreciated.

stephem

Please see discussion upthread, which we should probably put in the wiki. Space is still being released. But it looks like BA is not displaying award space close in any more. So at about 7 days out, which is where the releases tend to happen, BA will not show anything for CX. Bottom line, you have to keep calling AA and asking for a manual check by them.

DDResq

Good to know and sorry for the confusion. Are there any other websites that I can check besides Qantas, or is calling AA my only option? Thanks again.

stephem

Qantas seems to give you decent close in availability for US-Asia, but I have been trying to use it this week for intra Asia and Asia-US and find that it is only showing one week out and so useless for close in awards.

AAExecPlatFlier

Close in, and within Asia, I see some routes not displayable on QF within 2 days, and then for other city pairs, I can see the award availability. Can't figure out a pattern

stephem

I'm piecing together some different flights right now to change our Asia2 to US tickets. I found the TPAC and intra asia, but cannot find domestic US, and likely wont until the very last minute (thankfully Alaska seems to do a release about 48 hours out). I am curious what the options are for adding domestic US segments are, I know I can do this up until we start flying first segment, but is it possible to add the AS segments on say once we are on the ground in HKG awaiting next flight? I've given up on having something that is identical end point prior to ticketing (so will have to pay new rates), but if I am going to have to drop 15k miles more per ticket, I'd like to get us all the way home if the award seats do open, rather than being dropped at the TPAC gateway. Anyone with any data points on this?

jamienbaker

Can you give a sample scenario? General rule is you can't add segments to a oneway award once first segment is within 4 hrs of taking off.

jamienbaker

You have to admit, between QF and BA sites not offering any visibility close-in, this is absolutely glorious for AA Elite members not averse to calling from overseas. It represents meaningfully less competition for close-in awards.

stephem

ok thanks, that gives us something to shoot for. We land in SFO and want to add SFO-SEA but there is nothing available now, even though AS flights show 7s in all front cabin buckets. Guessing we may have to just buy those...

jamienbaker

Would suck to get stuck at the gateway. Figure out what the cost would be for a last minute ticket (versus buying today) and then assess is worth waiting for an award to be released while you're still in Asia.

FT-hss

CX award releasers on Christmas & Day after Christmas holidays? Nothing released last night T-15.

DDResq

Are they still only loading availability on Sunday nights for the subsequent week, or is more of a rolling process?

stephem

4x HKGORD Jan 3 biz released and immediately back into inventory.

1x HKGLAX Jan 3 biz released and NOT back into inventory.

We are flying SGN-HKG-HND-SFO instead as a boatload of JL biz opened up at last minute.