No Business or First for reward travel...a change at BA?
 

I am planning a trip for about a year out and noticed that whatever day/date I choose the only choice available it Economy! So, I began doing some what/if's and I continue to see nothing but Economy seating as available...My question is has BA stopped offering Business and/or First using Avios? I have NEVER had this happen before when booking a year in advance so I am stunned at this. If BA won't be offering Business or First options with Avios I will have to consider other options and, I would suspect, would others.
Thank you to anyone who might have some insights on this issue.

Hmm... which route are you seeing this on?

Try with SeatSpy or BAredepemptionfinder (dot com for both), it gives you a 355 days ahead schedule. The first one shows all classes in one view which is quite handy.

BA always release at least a pair of CW seats for award at 355 days ahead on every route. If you are looking a popular school holiday route then it is extremely difficult to obtain one.
BA can release Avios seats during the whole period but that mainly for revenue management purpose and most likely closer to departure.

PHL to Basel, Switzerland and the same thing happened on direct flight from PHL to LHR...perplexing! I also tried using different browsers and separate accounts (my wifes) and saw the same result....Economy only.

Looking at SeatSpy there is somewhat plentiful availability in all classes on the direct PHL-LHR, albeit by no means every day. Try selecting that you want to continue your journey with stopovers, then build in a stopover of 0 days, and you should at least be able to connect to Y for the short hop.

BA only guarentee to release 4 economy and 2 club seats on every flight. There is no commitement from them to release WTP and F. Nor is there a commitment to release any more seats once the initial allocation has been taken up though of course they often do depending on the route and time of year.

Some routes are very popular and people make the effort to be ready to book bang on T-355 days when seats are first released even if that is in the small hours of the night. Ref the many posts asking what time the seats are released.

Nothing has changed since maybe 2015 ?

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...9-edition.html

2 x J and 4 x Y on every flight released 355 days prior to departure

I’m currently tracking a l/h destination in J, for the return sector only, which should pop in around 10 days from now. Each morning they pop up, I get the alert emails at around 0430, and by 0930 the flights have gone. I shall have to get up early when the critical date comes around!

Thank you to all who responded...you've provided some insights and some tools for use in the future...Merry Christmas!!!

Is this 0430 and 0930 British time or US?

From experience, fresh reward inventory is added a few hours before you are receiving these alerts. Try 00:30 to 01:00 (UK time)

to Prospero...is this British time? Opps....sorry you did indicate time zone...my bad.

I can see at least one PHL-LHR Club World seat for I would guess 60% of dates in the next 355 days and almost every Sunday and Monday departing PHL. In November there is only one day, 28 November, when there isn't BA availability in the PHL-LHR direction, and it's available every day LHR-PHL. As ever with connections, it's best to search separately. And use the direct search rather than the Reward Finder screen. If you add in BWI, PIT, IAD, JFK, EWR, AA then Iberia, I doubt you'll have much problem finding something suitable.

In the case of BSL, if there are not good options on LHR-BSL - and this maybe a connection related issue - also consider ZRH or even STR.

Strangely I was searching PHL availability about an hour ago for my own purposes and saw plenty.

Are you sure you have sufficient Avios in your BAEC account? 2 x CW / CE return tickets will be 231,000 Avios off-peak and 276,000 peak (PHL-LHR-BSL, BSL-LHR-PHL). If you don't have enough the reward flight page won't give any availability.in CW but will show economy.

Quick side Q, Sir. At that ungodly hour, does the Gold line connect to India? I’d be barely functional at that time anyway, and fighting language barriers and the risk of an unskilled Agent is a bit worrying!

I had many positive experience with the Indian call centre and I doubt it can be a problem to book a simple Avios award. I don’t think the UK gold line automatically will connect at that time but there are local numbers you can call.

:confused: I just searched for 2xF return LON-SCL return and it showed me availability - even though I'm almost 400k Avios short. I'm even too far away from the fewest Avios/most cash option to be able to purchase the shortfall.

I stand corrected.

I just checked the OP's route PHL-BSL via LHR outbound 10 Nov 2020 return 24 Nov 2020 and found availbility in Club for 2 passengers costing 251,000 Avios + an eye-watering £2,079.82 in Taxes Fees and Charges return even though I am a few thousand short of 251,000 Avios. It also showed availability in First for those dates.

If you’re looking for flights on release at T-355; that happens at midnight GMT all year round (so 01:00 BST during UK daylight saving time). Best to be on the phone a few mins before if the transaction can’t be done online (guessing a 2-4-1 is involved).

Two weeks ago the Gold line did indeed transfer to India at midnight. A very competent and personable agent handled my booking successfully and, when the line dropped, called me back immediately. Perfect service standards.

Thanks to all those whop have reassured me ... I'll try to remember to report back in a week's time!

Happy Christmas and Safe Travels in 2020.

It is well reported in the other midnight release threads, but one thing some FTers do is call the USA number on Skype or similar VOIP providers, since they are still open, and generally it will be handled by the Newcastle Contact Centre. The alternative is the Singapore or Tokyo number (which is handled by Hong Kong). There are some differences about this in terms of daylight saving time (which the Tropics don't need to do) so best researched a bit before the calling time. For many routes it's not necessary, but for CPT, MRU, SEZ, SYD it's probably worth doing.

An update...when I was making a choice using booking via Avios the drop down box showed ONLY Economy, however, I decided to proceed and, lo and behold, when it went through it machinations it DID show the other classes for my itinerary.
Again, I thank everyone for their input and, in particular, for the couple of tools mentioned which I have used and have found to be EXTREMELY USEFUL.
Merry Christmas everyone and thanx for your help.

If you type in the origin or destination airport and don't then select the auto-complete option it offers you it will often only allow you to select economy to search for. By that I mean you type in LHR for example and then don't click to select "London Heathrow" or whatever the form loads up. You just need to wait a couple of seconds

If there is only availability in one direction, how does one go about getting a one way redemption and paying for the other leg? Can't seem to work it out, and it's the first time I'm confronted with the possibility of doing this. Can this be done on BA.com or is it best to call up?

As such it can't be done, you can't mix redemption and revenue tickets, they are internally structured in a different way. Having separate tickets is a risk flying in one continuous trip, but if you are going to Place A, stay there a few days, return home to B, then having separate tickets isn't much of a risk.