Finding Reward Availability When Switching Date of Flight
 

A friend has an award ticket booked for June 13, but wants to push the flight up, preferably to before Shavuot (June 7-9). He spoke to LY, and they said the only award availability is on June 9.

Do they ever open up additional seats sometime before the flight, or can he go standby? (Or can any TPLs on the board put in a good for him ;))

Set some expertflyer alerts.

Yes, they do open up additional seats sometimes (I've certainly seen it happen).
Whether it's cancelled seats going back onto the system, or just additional seats opening up when flights are not full I don't know.

Good advice re setting an Expertflyer alert, and if you don't have an account with them just PM me the details and I'll set the alert for you.

I will speak to him and get back to you. I assume you'll need his current flight, but what else? Matmid number? Name?

Thanks

No, to set up the ExpertFlyer.com alert all that is needed is the flights they would like to take and the class they'd like to fly. An email address would be good as well to forward the alert when availability shows up, if it show up.

Well he's flexible enough that he's willing to take any flight before June 5. Could one set up multiple flights for the alert? Or would I need to just set up multiple alerts?

Multiple alerts.

you can create a 5 day trial account on expertflyer.com on your own, free of charge. and when that is finished, you can create another one with a seperate email (clean cookies, or another computer).

That would be inadvisable. If we find that several trial accounts are being created to check for the same flights in such a manner, our system will notice it and deactivate the accounts.

Also it doesn't change the fact that you need multiple alerts. Amy progress on a single alert for a range of dates?

Steering clear of trouble, my friend as it turns out, has an ExpertFlyer account. He set up multiple alerts, and got a hit for June 5, which he took. Thanks for the advice.

How much does an ExpertFlyer account cost, and what are the benefits of joining, besides for alerts of seat openings?

There is a basic membership which limits the number of monthly searches, costing $4.99 a month, and an unlimited membership that costs $9.99.
You can also pay annually and save a little.
There are more benefits to the full membership which although I have, I cannot remember what exactly they are... :)

Other than seat alerts you can check what booking classes are left on each flight at any given time (and on LY that includes redemption classes).
In addition you can see live seat maps which work until the very last moment with some airlines (including LY) and with others up until around 24 hours prior to departure (like with BA for example) which is probably when airport have control of it.

The full list of the features included in the Basic and Premium memberships are available here: http://www.expertflyer.com/frequent-flyer-programs Flight Availability & Seat Alerts are Premium features.

I have been a premium member for a few years now. It is probably the best value anywhere for $99/year. It has saved me 000's of dollars since I joined!

Agreed.