disneyfriend0530

I don't know why my post is erased.. I write the issue again.

I have been watching business seat availability on China Airlines (JFK-TPE) using Delta Skymiles for some weeks.
I could see plenty of seats available until last Saturday, but all of a sudden it says "Sold Out."
I felt weird so that I searched for the same route for other dates, which I found plenty in the past, but they also say "Sold Out."
Then, I checked on revenue tickets, but I saw only 10 out of 40 business class seats were reserved.
I don't know why China Airlines changed the availability so quick just at once for most of the available dates somehow.
As I heard, Delta rearranges seating/pricing every Saturday, but would that have affected this? I think it's China Airlines' decision though.
Please let me know what to expect or to do at this point. I hope that they may release the seats again, and this is just a temporal thing.

3Cforme

Award availability is managed in real time. By that I mean if one award seat is available and somebody tickets it, that flight shows no award seats until CI and DL replenish award inventory.

flyerCO

Seats selected doesnt equal seats sold. Especially on non US airlines, people don't always pre select seats. They just accept what they get at checkin.

RealHJ

...and CI award seats are often blocked out on many days, i.e. 0 are released. When some are released, it may very well be one seat (many airlines only release 1 O seat ever), so when one is booked, it's gone for good. "So quick" is only as quick as it takes someone to book the one available seat.

disneyfriend0530

Thanks for the response.
But then, what I don't understand is, I checked four seats were available the day before, and it's suddenly described as sold out..
Moreover, too many dates showing multiple seats availability have changed so quick to say sold out, which I highly come to assume something's intentionally changed.

disneyfriend0530

Thanks for the response.
But then, what I don't understand is, I checked four seats were available the day before, and it's suddenly described as sold out..
Moreover, too many dates showing multiple seats availability have changed so quick to say sold out, which I highly come to assume something's intentionally changed.

RealHJ

Then most likely inventory taken away, or blocked by DL. You can often only book KE, CI, and other airline seats at 331 days out, sometimes a few minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes a few weeks window, until DL blocks it out, or the other airline removes availability. I've noticed that pattern often. But also the opposite is true. In short inventory comes and goes.

When you see it, book it. Don't delay.

disneyfriend0530

Thanks for the explanation and hope it's the DL that blocked it temporarily. I am checking hourly on it!!

RealHJ

Hourly is overdoing it. Weekly or once every few days.

Availability (and pricing for DL flight) awards changes, at times frequently. But not like hourly. If you check one or twice a week you're fine. Just important to start checking right at 331 days out. If you check regularly and have a few +/- weeks flexibility in your travel schedule, there is a decent chance you can get the flights you want.

MSPeconomist

Something else that might be happening is that there's a possible strike by both China Air and EVA. Without knowing which flights are likely to be cancelled, they could be protecting seats for IROPs rebookings if necessary.

disneyfriend0530

Thanks for the advice. I am in a hurry simply because the flight I want to take is in December... Anyways, Thanks and I will try to check every a few days then.

bgriff

Are you still searching for 4 seats? If you are searching for 4 seats and before there were exactly 4 seats available for award bookings, but then 1 of them was booked, now your 4 seat search will show as sold out because there aren't 4 award seats on that flight any more, there would be only 3. If you search for 1 seat it may still show as available (and maybe also for 2 or 3 depending how many seats were booked, if this is what happened).

If you search for 1 seat and it's showing sold out, it's possible someone else booked all 4 seats, but it's also possible there's some sort of blocking or IT issues going on.

Either way, as others have said, waiting to book an available award is always a risk.

RealHJ

Good point. I didn't think to state the obvious. Always should search for 1 seat in any search (award or revenue), to find real availability and price. May need to book different seats at different price (revenue) or some award and some revenue, or fly some pax on different flights, etc. 4 O (J) seats on a single flight is quite rare...many airlines nowadays limit it to 1O/2X max per flight.

NOLAnwGOLD

In the past, I had lots of "ghost" availability for book CI flights with DL SkyPesos. It was really frustrating since sometimes you could get the reservation and often you couldn't once you tried to confirm it. Since I am PM/DM with the free redeposit, I would take what i could get and hope that something better would come along which wasted hours and hours of my life. Eventually I got some things to work (though it forced an overnight in NRT, which turned out quite lovely and glad I did it since the town was really cute). FYI, we were doing one way, J seats TPE-NRT for 2, since DL dumped TPE without any real way of getting home. From HND-TSA, we got J seats via AA miles on JAL, which was awesome (aside from having to call AA to book JAL flights, though we got what we wanted).

disneyfriend0530

I am almost sure at this point that it's not sold out at all. As I compare the case to other CI flights, I see that even the flights sold for more seats still show availability.
I come to conclude that it's Delta's block because of the current mileage promotion from US to HKG routes - unbelievably cheap.
After this promotion ends, I hope that they may release CI seats more - I guess they want people to use their mileages for the routes they are not selling good at somehow.