erisaguy

there used to be huge availability in F on NYC-LHR route because of the large number of flights, particularly in the summer. Now there are no flights all summer with 2 award seats available and only a few with 1. this is a drastic change as others have mentioned. But once again it is not clear anything can be done.

riced

Right before our eyes, there has been a massive BA avios devaluation in the form of reduced award redemption. Instead of the massive outcry over the lounge food, people should really be concerned over their Avios. Executive Club awards were never free given the huge taxes and surcharges they put on them, but they were useful as discounted F&J tickets. With little to no useful availability now, they are rapidly becoming useless. Will I find a way to use them? Sure, but I have a lot of flexibility as do many other FT'ers. For those who are stuck with a limited window in which to travel, avios are for all intentional purposes worthless.

And to those BA apologists that claim they could get 3 F seats to wherever 6 months ago-that was 6 months ago! I could get 3 F seats from lots of cities in the US six months ago too. Try booking more than 1F seat and see what the availability is now...

BizFlyin

First of all, I am in no way shape or form a BA apologist. You can ask pretty much anyone around here, I am pretty hard on BA in a number of ways. But I just did an SFO trip both ways in F thanks to my avios. This month.

Might it be harder? Maybe. So now I need to spend 5 minutes a day for 7 days instead of for 2 days to find my avios availability. Big deal. When I booked it, however, there were *multiple* seats available.

IMH

Don't let the negativity on threads like this get you down! It has got harder, mainly because there are a lot more miles chasing the availability, and booking CW for several people ("the family") has always been challenging, but patience and flexibility (dates, airports, consider AA) are your friends.

HIDDY

Yes availability has been poorer of late but you're not tied to using them on BA. You can use them on other partner airlines......you might even save yourself a few bob in taxes/charges along the way.

peck

Great post. Reading some of the whining on this site can be very disheartening, but with some patience and flexibility you'll find some availability. I have recently redeemed to both South and North America in premium cabins. Good luck!

Private Pyle

I couldn't agree more and posted something similar in another thread about the supposed difficulties in redeeming.
Those of us willing to put in a little extra work and think things out for ourselves rather than being spoon fed will be rewarded.
Let them moan its better for us

riced

And the apologists come out! This is about BA award availability, not partner airlines. If I want to fly on CX, I'll use my AA points. They are way cheaper (amount of points) and I can change the dates without charge. Plus AA includes connecting flights.

Go ahead and kid yourself about the availability, but there has been a massive reduction in the amount of BAaward seats available. If you want to pretend that nothing has changed, then go right ahead, but it HAS changed. I've booked plenty of flights with BA and reward redemption has NEVER been so difficult. For those of you who can get a seat 48hours out, great for you, but even that sort of availability is no longer guaranteed. It takes a lot more than 5 minutes of looking for a few days to find what you want these days...

BizFlyin

How do you know that? Do you work for BA? There are many explanations on why it's harder for you to find award availability - that is only one of them.

Maybe for you, but not for me.

PS - Feel free to flip through my post history if you think I'm an apologist.

stifle

As per stifle's law, as the length of a thread here grows, the probability of a person being called a BA apologist, or a person being told to use a private jet, or an argument about children in lounges or premium classes approaches 1.

I must say I have yet to see the term "apologist" used here in a constructive post.

BizFlyin

That BA apologist part is a new addition right stifle? Seems like a cheap trick... every thread on this forum has someone being called an apologist - mostly by me

stifle

Nope, it was in the original law

layz

When I first hit gold finding reward flight saver redemptions became crazily easy thanks to the increased availability golds get in economy. There also tended to be decent availability in Club Europe.

I've now noticed availability is getting harder to find, but by no means impossible. It's possible something has changed but it's also possible that there's just a lot more people redeeming. The diamond club credit cards currently give out an insane amount of avios.

Crampedin13A

Well we were told to wait till June 4 when the premium sale was over and all would be good. That certainly didn't happen. I noticed yesterday that some CW seats are starting to trickle in on YYZ-LHR. Generally on Mondays. Inbound is harder to get though. Plus at one point there wasn't an F seat on the route available before Dec.24 but now some July dates are available and a single seat in August. There has definitely been a change in when these seats are released. In the past I could almost always UuA from WT+ to CW at time of booking and CW to F was even easier. Not finding that at all since about March.

Blueboys999

Based on my own recent experience looking for redemptions, I agree with all of that.

To be honest, I personally see little point in speculating on the reasons why and even less point in having a go at others who take a different view (either way). I somewhat selfishly confine my efforts to the increasingly difficult task of spending my hard earned avios on something worthwhile.