Is Guest J and F inventory likely to open close to DOD?
 

I am an AA flyer new to EY and looking into award bookings.

The dates and routes I would be interested in (AUH - NRT in early May) currently have no J or F Guest seat availability, which is not surprising.
However, I would like to know whether there is any significant likelihood of this inventory opening up closer to departure date?

Other than re-releasing cancelled awards, does EY typically increase the inventory of guest seats prior to DOD, for example if the flight has not been fully sold?

It can be sporadic, though they do seem to be relatively consistent about releasing some seats close to departure ...

That being said, if the flights are sold out, then there's not much that you can do. I just checked Expert Flyer, in early May many of the flights are either sold out or close to being sold out.

AUH-NRT
2nd May - Many J seats
3rd May - 7 J seats
4th May - 3 J seats
5th May - 0 J seats
6th May - 0 J seats
7th May - 3 J seats
8th May - 3 J seats
9th May - Many J seats
10th May - 2 J seats
11th - 13th May - Many J seats
14th May - 5 J seats

There’s no F cabin after May 1.

As I understand it, The FT general rule is that if you are using miles from airline XX's FF program, you should post in the XX forum. This helps avoid unwelcoming responses. The AA forum has a thread on booking awards on EY using AAdvantage miles. In fact you do not even need to post there, because the thread contains a wiki that addresses your question (see section "Availability").