Booking End of Schedule
 

I've been trying to book an Iberian J award seat with Iberia Plus Avios for May 23, 2020 (Saturday) for LAX-MAD, May 24, 2020 (Sunday) MAD-LON. The Sunday is 361 days from today, May 29, 2019. Between 8:40am - 9:10 am BCN time aka a bit after midnight PST, somebody booked that seat and I have no idea how they did it. I'd been unsuccessfully trying to do so for the past hour (only could get to screen just before entering payment info), and seeing availability slip away in real-time is absolutely crushing. I was able to select the seats, but just before the booking screen, Iberia.com would give me an error that I cannot book more than 361 days out. I tried calling Iberia and the agent was similarly unable to select that London seat with the same error. Is there a trick I'm not aware of that gets past Iberia's broken website for booking end of schedule seats?

I don't think it's someone else who got the seats, especially as you called and the agent was getting the same error. More likely that a PNR has been created for you, and the seat is held under your name. That PNR will autocanx in a few hours.

There might be a way of calling up and getting an agent to find you by name/flight number/date, and issuing the ticket within that PNR, instead of letting it lapse.

Thank you! You were absolutely right. Ended up being moot since I booked a different date (Thursday) that I now realize works better with the dates I had in mind. A pity Iberia cancelled the Friday frequency for this route.

It look like May 15 is pricing as high season for TATL (MIA-MAD). It's only 42.5k in low season but this priced out much higher (62.5k).

It was low season this year. Do we know high season dates for 2020?

Thanks in advance!

May 15 will be the start of a three-day weekend in Madrid next year, maybe that's why it has peak prices.