mlpinto

Hi,

I'm trying to find a single reward seat in F for a trip in March or April next year, but seem to be having no luck with the ANA tool. I've tried some random dates much further out but still can't see any.

Are there any tips for finding LX F availability or is it just very thin on the ground?

Thanks for any help. I'm sure this comes up often but searching didn't provide me anything immediate...

soy

There have been reports that ANA is not totally accurate for LX availability. Some report getting flights from ICC even though theres nothing showing on ANA.

FlyerTalker7654

You are better off ringing BMI and asking for the dates that you want. Even if the 1st agent says no sorry, ring again. I was in New York and had to get home, I rang up every day, about 3 times during the course of the day and finally got JFK-FRA in business with SQ.....took me 4 days but I had the time to spare to do it.

Hope you get it!!!

mlpinto

Thanks. I will try the ICC tomorrow...

simon stingray

I've just looked on Expert flyer and for the random dates which I checked it is showing plenty of availability:

Zurich-JFK

March 14 3 F seats (1 seat on LX16 & 2 on LX14)
March 15 2 F seats (LX16)
March 16 4 F seats (2 on LX 16 & 2 on LX14)
March 17 4 F seats (2 on LX 16 & 2 on LX 14)
March 18 4 F seats (2 on LX 16 & 2 on LX 14)
March 19 4 F seats (2 on LX 16 & 2 on LX 14)
March 20 4 F seats (2 on LX 16 & 2 on lX 14)

Returns which I checked between March 21 and March 27 showing 1 or 2 seats available on most days.

Whether ICC will be able to see them is another matter.

Cheetah_SA

I understood that EF shows availability that pertains to Miles & More members and that award seats eligible for booking using other FF programs will only be made available closer to the time.

I have been monitoring seats in April for several months now and nothing is showing on ANA even though M&M shows availability for most days.

ikura

In my experience DC availability is more similar to M&M/EF availability than ANA Tool availability for LX.

mlpinto

Thanks - that covers the exact dates I'm after so this looks encouraging.

mlpinto

Glad it wasn't just me being incompetent with the ANA tool!

Cheetah_SA

Could you be more specific about this? How many times has this happened, how long ago and what were the circumstances (e.g. how far in advance of the flight)?

In trying to divine any rules that may be underlying the release of award seats it would be helpful to know more details about the anecdotal evidence. At the very least we can start developing a balance of probabilities.

My own experience has been that on 4 different occasions in the past 3 months I have seen LX availability on M&M but not ANA and not been able to book it with ICC each time. Twice was with flights within a month or so and twice was flights many months out. I have no experience with trying to book LX award seats that do actually show on ANA.

LonLH

M/M has started hoarding award seats- I can see plenty of availability even on peak travel dates if I use my M/M account, however neither DC nor ANA shows any availability.
For example, I can see plenty of availability in latter half of Dec FRA-GRU or MUC-GRU via M/M, while the flights have nothing as per ANA. I can get three O seats MUC-ICN (which is showing F5 A3) in Feb using M/M. And from past experience, I have been able to waitlist LX flights with M/M when there was no award inventory which has cleared in 24-48 hours.

mlpinto

Well, having spoken to the ICC today they can't see any F availability on any of the dates that Simon Stingray found via EF. I'll give it another try sometime soon, but I'm not feeling so optimistic...

baggageinhall

I suspect this is married segments at play. There is availability ZRH-JFK but it suddenly disappears if you start from LHR even if there are seats on the LHR-ZRH sector.

Cheetah_SA

My experiences mirrored those of LonLH and were point to point - JNB/ZRH in one instance and ZRH/JFK in another (unrelated). So married segments did not apply.

Jetstreamer

Ahh, if only we all had M&M accounts