Paralytic

A question often asked/discussed on this board refers to when BA releases redemption seats, with people suggesting its at 1am UK time. So, I thought I'd find out...

Using a script written by someone else (thanks) that checks availability (via ba.com) for a route, I wrote another script that schedules that script to run (with appropriate guard-rails in place so that I'm not abusing ba.com).

I've had this script running on and off for a couple of weeks now, looking at a variety of flights (domestic, short-haul and long-haul). The findings are as follows:

- As many have stated before, the point at which the majority of seats are released is at or shortly after 1am UK time. I'm not able to say exactly at what time it happens, due to the way my script queues up requests, but they start appearing from 1am

- As someone else previously pointed out, although BA says seats are released 355 days in advance, it is actually 354 days. So, at 1am today (last night), availability started appearing for 17th April 2015. This is not consistent across routes, however, and QF and CX seem to have different rules.

None of the above will be of any surprise to many people, but its good to know that 1am is when you need to stay up to if you want those to-be-release flights.

SteveF

Good effort ^.

philco

Brilliant - will the program continue to run and reveal more patterns and peculiarities of this dark science? Can you apply it to the Avios company to spot when long range availability coming online differs? Can we all have a copy?

Globaliser

Thanks for the work on this.

Does this 1 am release time apply only to seats that are as far away as possible on the availability horizon, or does it also hold true for releases at shorter notice before departure date?

blackstone82

+1

MPH1980

I'd been considering building something like this for my own use on short notice UUA opportunities. But I don't fly often enough to make it worth my time. Good know people are getting it in place!

It'd be interesting to see BA's response if it was more widely used/abused.

EuropeanPete

Thanks for sharing the results of this - very useful.

I too would be very interested in the answer to Globaliser's question, as I've never once known what continent I would be on 9 months ahead of the time.

martandrews

Given my most recent BAEC award bookings, including GIG over Christmas, CPT over NYE and SIN/HKG over Easter, I can confirm that BA definitely releases award seats on all routes (even the most popular ones).

From what I experienced, long-haul seats are released 355 days in advance, usually at midnight (CPT and GIG were released exactly at midnight, SIN at around 30min past midnight), for A380, B777 and B747 it's usually 2 seats in F, 2-4 seats in CW and 2-4 seats in WT+.

I appreciate that not everyone can plan that far in advance, but if you can and are willing to stay up to book your flights (which is definitely worth it, when going long-haul in F or CW) then I do not see any reason to complain about award availability at BA.

BertiebassUK

I struggle to book a flight on the website, so congratulations for being able to put something liek this together. I especially like how easy you make it sound.

IMH

Welcome to FT, martandrews. Subject to verification by our independent adjudicators, this is quite possibly the first time ever that someone has used their first post on FT to say something positive about BA's award availability. Congratulations!

FlyingDentist

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

I recall reading on another FT thread that BA has a "shake down" of inventory at about 2 weeks before departure.

I have seen award / upgrade availability improve greatly around that time. Hence the FT wisdom of booking redemptions as 2x oneways so that one leg can be changed if something better comes along.

Can your script be adapted to looking at redemptions from this perspective? Would be interesting to see what happens on some of the more 'difficult' redemption routes...

Toonfan

Outbound availability is certainly possible by this method. However, trying to use a 2-4-1 is a lot more tricky. You have to book the outbound as soon as it appears, but the inbound can only be added by phone and the Indian call centre staff just want to cancel the whole thing.
You also have to hope the inbound is still there in the gap between 1am and the phone lines opening.

Mattyb44

Isnt it possible to reach someone at BAEC 24 hours a day now?

Paralytic

I don't really have the data to answer the 2nd point - I've been concentrating on when seats are initially released. Let me see what I can do.

Paralytic

I do have a feature which kinds of shows this so I can set it up and see what it gives. Do you have a particular route in mind?