Waitlist Clear Time
 

I am on the wait list for an first class award seat that leaves in 13 days. What is the usual time frame in which wait lists clear?

Thanks!

I'm in the same situation, though it's about 2 months out - what ended up happening with yours?

Did either of you end up having any luck on yours?

KE states here Here
"It is a general rule that empty seats available at the time of flight departure are used for award seats.
However, award seats are assigned in advance for members to easily plan and confirm their travel itinerary.
Reservations for high-demand flights may be closed early."

Plenty of revenue seats left on the flight I want in a couple of days but it seems all award seats are full.

Has anyone had any experience with KE opening up seats in those circumstances?

For what it's worth - the answer to my question above is an emphatic 'No - Korean Air will not open up revenue seats for award tickets, even if there is only 6 hours to go, even if the same daily flight(s) have not sold out for the past month, even if the plane is not full'.

KE's 'general rule' about award seats cited above means - if you go to the airport when check-in opens the Ticketing Manager may apply that policy (i.e. assign an otherwise empty seat to an award seat). The KE call centre, however, can do nothing more than waitlist you for a cancelled award fare only. So, unless you are hanging about the airport Amazing Race style or have absolutely no other options - I would not recommend placing any faith in KE opening up award seats last minute.

Whilst I understand KEs policy is probably standard among airlines, I don't feel it's necessarily the most common sense approach. Nor do I think that it's a satisfactory response to hide behind a policy. UA recently dramatically showed why policies fail. Common sense and middle-management with power is needed.

Airlines aren't the most lucrative businesses and I understand why an airline may want to leave seats available to extract large last minute fares from corporate/desperate clients. That said, when planes are not flying out full - is there a benefit to KE to not accommodate the request? Perhaps most others would pay $1300 for a o/w revenue.

As it is, we are catching a last minute 13 hour bus from NYC - Toronto to fly to the same destination I could have reached from JFK, spending the same miles and taxes, whilst both flights from JFK that day left at less than full capacity.

Ahh, that is not great news. My gf and I are flying KE F from ICN to the US in 2 weeks. I booked here ICN-ATL (home) and confirmed/held a seat for myself ICN-DFW and waitlisted ICN-ATL. I've been pretty confident up until now that it would clear since there are still 5 empty F seats on ICN-ATL flight, but now I'm not so hopeful.

If my experience is anything to go by, maybe not. Although some tickets did open up from IAD though by this stage we were already on our way up to Toronto. So maybe JFK was just particularly bad and you will have more luck from ATL or DFW.

As we literally waited til last minute hoping a flight from JFK would open up we couldn't make payment before we jumped on the bus. No problem, we were told twice, just pay at the airport, any time up until check-in closes. Our bus arrives late and we reach the airport 2.5 hours before the flight rather than even earlier. No wi-fi to call but we emailed just to be safe. Our seats had auto-cancelled 10 minutes prior to us reaching the ticketing counter and could not be recovered. No guarantee we could get new ones (though who could possibly purchase that flight at last minute?). So we had to wait until everyone else had checked-in before we could be issued a ticket. Phew.

Put nicely, KE are rule-sticklers. From a management perspective, I would say there is a serious case of not giving lower level management sufficient authority to make common sense decisions. Though, as stated above they are certainly not alone in the aviation industry.

FWIW F was basically empty, as I expect you will find too. However, due to said reasons, you might want to keep your expectations of a seat opening up real low.

I currently have 2x SFO-ICN-HKG F awards booked. However, I really wanted to fly on KE's A380, but my date (July 2 or 3) isn't available ex-JFK or ex-LAX.

Both dates have 6+ seats available for sale. What are my chances that award seats will open up on one of the A380 flights out of JFK or LAX?

I need to buy positioning flights from ORD to SFO, but I'm still hoping that something will open up on one of the A380 flights. I don't want to wait too long and end up paying a fortune for the positioning flights, though.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated :D