Cathay and Dragon Air avail? - tons of seats...then no seats
 

So after much procrastination I finally went in to book an avios flight from PVG to HKG for this coming Monday Oct. 31 only to find that what was once about 10-12 available flights using avios was no ... 0

Anyone have any experience with Cathay and Dragon Air flight availability vanishing closer to departure date? I remember a few years back I was able to book a HKG to Singapore flight same day.

Looking a week later to Monday November 7 there are 15 flights available on either Cathay or Dragon Air.

Guess I'll be booking the cheapest revenue flight but wanted to see if anyone had any similar experiences here.

I have had a few experiences of this. Notably last week when the BA website refused to help me change avios flights (as usual nowadays it seems...).

In the time it took the GGL line to confirm the website was down to waive the fee, 13 seats had disappeared from the flight, leaving only 1 J seat left on CX MNL-HKG at the time I needed. As it is such a quick flight I wouldn't bother with J, but I was left with no choice! This was 2 days before travel, similar thing happened to all other flights on that day.

Isn't there something about CX shutting down short-notice redemption seats due to fraud?

Last summer I was able to book a CX flight 75min ahead of the flight. This year I am seeing a lot shadow availability on CX (not so much KA) - trying searching again. It keeps coming and going.

Yeah I was able to do a similar thing a couple of years back. The earliest available flight is on the Sunday November 6 but nothing before that.

hmmmm guess I'll keep checking :(

Yes I remember a thread about CX not releasing seats on some routes TPE being 1 at less than 7 days notice due to mainland ticket fraud.

This is the thread https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...departure.html

There was an online block on the TPE route but that was lifted. Apparently there remained a block on WUH and CTU but I don't know whether that is still in place. I am not sure whether the block may cover PVG or the issues seen by the OP are resulting from something else.

For both WUH and CTU I can only find seats exactly seven days before departure on ba.com

The same goes to PVG, PEK, XIY, CKG......

There may be (again??) a 5 days block for TPE. Can someone comfirm this?

Haven't had a problem with this, and find CX/KA availability outstanding. Closest to time I've booked on avios was 3 days ahead, CCU-HKG.

It looks like the block is back. It was fine when I was booking next day flights on Thursday, but no availability for the next 4 days when I looked on Friday.

Do we know if the block just for online bookings and one can still book the tickets via call centre?

Cathay and Dragonair redemptions between China and Hong Kong are blocked within 5 days of travel . This applies to both ba.com and call centre bookings.

Slightly OT but are there ever 2 redemption seats for JFK - YVR in first?

Seems to be lots with 1 seat.

I think they only release 1 seat at a time in First these days. There's only 6 F seats on each aircraft.

Thanks. So if I book 1 seat is there a chance that a 2nd might be made available?
Then the OH can come too.