jonivatj

I'm merely a silver peasant

Jainzar

Does anyone has recent experiences to waitlist a Y award? Is it still possible?

I got the answer that they don‘t have awards available in the requested timeframe. I am not sure if I got again a low-qualified agent on WA or if this is not possible anymore.

ffay005

Yes, it is possible. I've once had a reluctant agent but even she finally agreed to waitlist what I wanted.

intuition

Waitlisting an award is probably much more work. Not defending, just saying.

ffay005

Then I guess the answer is (one again) that the whole award and upgrade system is utter chaos and completely broken.

Even if you use AY sources, they come up with different results for the same flights. I had a case some months ago where I could see availability online on the AY website and called CS and asked to move my dates, Janica said it is not possible because there was no availability. I told her to hold on for a sec, booked what I saw online and asked her to check what I had just done (and cancelled the award I wanted to amend). She was surprised...

intuition

Like I posted earlier today - I am pretty sure they are using one of the newly developed tools and they just see "upgrades exist" or "waitlist" and they just hit a button.
The new IT has "simplyfied" CS work by giving them a dumbed down tool, and it is buggy and now they don't have any tools to rectify it.

kanamurva

This has been propably asked several times, but at least I didn't find anything in fare classes tutorial so I'll ask: with lots of points gathered I would be looking for award flights. I understand that not many (especially LH) are available. So I was thinking that by looking at plane fill levels one could estimate, how propable it is to get a J-award cleared later. Can this estimation be done? I'm newbie in using EF so can you estimate something by looking at booking classes in EF, like is I see a following situation:
J9 C9 D2 R0 I0 U0 W9 E9 T8 P0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M0 L0 V0 S0 N0 Q0 O0 Z0 G2 X0

Is this good or bad when thinking of biz-award? There are at least 9 seats available there right? What if I see J9, C5?

intuition

Yes, there should be at least 9 seats.
You should read J9 C9 D2 R0 I0 as they are currently offering zero seats at price point R and I, 2 seats at pricepoint D or 9 seats at pricepoint J and C. (these ie not concurrent seats so you cannot add 9+9+2) So as long as there is a 9 in any J-class, there ought to be 9 seats available. (Give and take, if they overbook and similar tricks)

9 seats free when departure date is nearing is theoretically good for waitlisted awards. You are competing with upgrades though, so perhaps they chose to upgrade 3 from waitlist and selling 5 upgrades to silly people and then there is none left for you.

Also remember that there are quite a few reports from people being denied upgrade at T-37 only to find the J cabin far from full when boarding.

Also, there seems to be a trend that revenue bookings comes later than before. Making prediction harder, as there can be a lot of seats actually sold even near departure.

kanamurva

I contacted Janica today at 10am for a hel-ivl-hel award for 4pax for Aug 2023. No awards available so she queued me. At 3pm I got the tickets. 1lumo, 1plat, 1kid, 1basic. I'm pretty happy with this first lumo encounter, although I had to pay 16k instead of 15k.

FinOWE

Good first Lumotic award experience also here. Booked 2-4-1 award to HND for next summer. Booking tool showed economy award available for 2 pax for my dates. Had to call to Janica to apply 4xEUR vouchers (and pay 1k extra even this type of transaction not possible online). Of course Janica did not see this availability immediately even Finnair.com was showing it. Took about 5 extra mins for her to get flights booked. Naturally only waitlist to J available and I asked Janica to check with "other department" if our upgrades can clear immediately. She promised to do it. Lo and behold, new J tix in my inbox about after 2 hours reservation made! Happy camper this time

akhk

May I ask who Janica is?

intuition

It is an anagram of Kajaani, the city where the Finnish speaking CS is/was situated. So it just means he called customer service

It is part of the slang used here, admittedly making things difficult for beginners, sorry for that.

ffay005

Janica is an anagram of Kajaani where the AY call center is located, and a representative of common Finnish first names among the younger female population, to which many of AY CS belong.

Welcome to FT!

Farlighed

I tried to find the answer by myself but didn't found any information. As far as I understand, an economy award can be cancelled for a fee of €50 and the points will be returned. But what happens tovouchers that were used for the booking like LH upgrade or 2-4-1 award? Are they lost or will be returned as well?

SuloL

I've probably missed it, but to confirm; has AY discontinued offering oneworld multicarrier awards?