Cancelling reward booking how quickly do they go into the pool.
 

Currently we have SA booked next month on a redemption booking, with a companion voucher. As it isn't likely to happen we are thinking of booking a back up destination without a companion voucher but again a reward flight. If we have to cancel South Africa once we get the companion voucher back I assume for our back up we would have to cancel wait for the reward flights to come back available, and then do it with a redemption voucher? Does anyone know if the flights go back in as available straight away? Or if there even will go back into the pool.

Thanks all

It doesn’t automatically go back in the pool. In the normal world, if a flight has subsequently got busier than expected it may well be added into revenue inventory instead. Equally if a flight is still super quiet it might drop back as available again.

in these times...who knows.

Thanks that is what I expected. Not sure it is worth running the gauntlet with but 125k miles is a lot to burn.

Chances of getting to SA next month (October or November?) is so minimal I’d scrap it now & book the back up with the companion voucher. Relying on award inventory reappearing after a cancellation is a roll of the dice. How many redemption seats are available currently?

Couldn't agree more

I have often wondered whether anyone can confirm with certainty that cancelled redemptions EVER instantly become available for others to book.
(As opposed to BA's Revenue Management systems keeping an eye on things and deciding to release extra seats as and when it suits them.)

If you really mean ‘ever’ then I can confirm that from one anecdotal experience (I believe the accepted FT term to make this sound more scientific is ‘datapoint’!).

Rugby World Cup in Japan last year (so redemptions were tough to come by), we changed our plans and cancelled 2 J seats HND-LHR about 6-7 months out. For context, these were ‘the’ 2 J seats which are guaranteed, and nothing had ever come up on that flight again so far as I know. Out of curiosity I checked a few minutes after cancelling and they were available again.

Yes, we've had cancelled inventory reappear but and snaffled it back but only because we were quick. It took about 5 minutes to reappear. Also we've had cancelled inventory not reappear.
Clearly it does happen because for example 2 J seats to the Maldives became available where there were none and generally BA wouldn't historically have any problems selling those seats for revenue.

I can give a confirmed datapoint. We had 3 Avios redemption bookings on the same flight LHR-SJC for a split class / split return family trip. My wife and I had 2 seats in F, 1 son in Y and 1 son + girlfriend in Y. The son+girlfriend decided not to go but other son wanted to bring a friend instead. So I called BA and they cancelled the son+girlfriend booking and the 2 Y outbound seats immediately appeared in the avios inventory so the agent could then make the avios booking for other son's friend. I had already checked that there was Y availability on the final return leg from IAD as son+girlfriend were originally returning from ORD, so the release of their return legs into inventory would have been no use as we wanted friend to return on same flight with us from IAD. I was a little anxious that the 2 outbound Y seats would vanish, but there was plenty of cash booking space on the flights if really necessary as a backup. As with anything IT related, always have a backup !