KE waitlist process
 

Hello, I just put a KUL-ICN-IAD reservation on hold via KE's call center. The agent told me that the J seat on KUL-ICN was confirmed, but that I'd be on the waitlist for a J seat on ICN-IAD. I have a few questions about this:

• The J-J itinerary appeared to be bookable on KE.com, but since I don't yet have sufficient miles in my account I could not proceed to hold it. Why would it show online as bookable but really be a waitlist seat?
  
• How exactly does the waitlist work? The phone agent told me that other pax had already filled up the J cabin (F too, for what it's worth). The flight departs more than 4 months from now, so I find it hard to believe that both premium cabins are completely full. Is it true that there are actually pax in those seats, or could it also be a matter of the full J inventory not being released yet? If it's an inventory matter, any indication of when that inventory would be released?
  
• Let's say hypothetically that my reservation hold is about to end, I'm still on the waitlist, but I want to book the flight anyway. Am I guaranteed a Y seat for ICN-IAD? Will they reduce the # of miles I spend to reflect the fact that I'm flying J-Y instead of J-J?

I checked a few other threads with similar topics but they either didn't address these questions or had been unanswered. Thanks.

Brief update: I checked ExpertFlyer and saw 33/42 J-cabin seats available, contradicting what the phone agent had told me. I called Korean back and spoke to a representative who was much more knowledgeable about the process. They said that it is a matter of the inventory for the awards booking class being available, not that there is a passenger in all 42 seats. That is exactly what I had originally thought...

So that brings me to my question, does anybody have experience with Korean opening up award inventory in the four months before a flight? Thanks.

Hi - I just waitlisted a seat for my gf in F while I got a confirmed hold on a seat for a flight at the end of May from ICN-ATL.

I'm curious as to the outcome of your waitlist - has it cleared yet? I find it hard to believe it wouldn't with that many seats available, but wondering on the time frame of when they actually clear the waitlist.

It did not clear and the hold expired

I've recently waitlisted an award USA-ICN F one-way. I have enough miles in the account to cover the award. I gave my mobile number for a text alert.

Regarding a waitlist KE F award, does KE "confirm the award with you" before taking the miles and issuing a ticket?

I’m new to KE, despite having a number of miles and appreciate the help/guidance.

When your waitlist gets confirmed, you are given a deadline to make a purchase (from a few days to over a week, depending on how close the flight is).
During that time the seat is reserved to your name and miles will only be deducted during purchase.

Fantastic, and thank you for the details!

When does KE usually start to clear (or deny) waitlist requests? I have SkyPass award flights waitlisted for JFK-ICN-SIN and back in business class for May and so far nothing has cleared.

Thanks

They don’t deny requests. It just stays on hold until flight time.
My experience is that it starts to get manually unblocked (Korea business hours) from 1 month before the flight, more so 2 weeks before the flight.
If someone cancels it can be anytime though.

My outbound flight cleared last night, about 18 days before departure. I had several flights on standby (Business class, departing JFK or BOS) and it was the BOS one that cleared. I ticketed it and canceled the standby requests on the others. Now waiting on the return flights that are about a month from now. A little worried as the flights look pretty full... but so is the BOS flight that they cleared me on, so crossing my fingers.

I'm trying fly from USA-ICN-HND. for the date I'm looking for, I see a flight from BOS, but would rather fly from JFK. If I ticket BOS-ICN-HND, is there any way to waitlist for the JFK departure instead?

Thanks.

Closing the loop on this one... my inbound flights never cleared. I was waitlisted on multiple ICN-JFK/BOS over May 21/22/23 in both J and F. And nothing cleared. I was not surprised that J never cleared because as flight time approached availability had reduced to zero. But F was still at 3 or 4 seats available right up to 24 hours before, but they never cleared. I don't know if they went out full (overbooking in J?) or with empty seats in F.

We secured SIN-HND in J and HND-JFK in F on JAL using AA miles to get home.

DAK.

ICN to/from JFK seems impossible in anything but economy now-a-days. I have been looking out to end of schedule and see nothing. And recent waitlists (see above) did not clear. Like you I can see occasional availability from BOS or ORD. My strategy would be to lock in the BOS-ICN-HND flights now and waitlist for JFK. The best way is probably to add the waitlist to the ticketed itinerary... either phone or use their live chat (I used live chat for my recent waitlists) and ask them to add to the same itinerary. The alternative would be to create a whole separate itinerary for the waitlist, but then you would have to waitlist the whole JFK-ICN-HND which is not ideal as all you really want to do is waitlist the first segment.

Do report back what you end up doing as I am likely to need to do the same unless they start opening up JFK again.

DAK.

Thanks for the tip about adding waitlist to existing itinerary. I've ticketed ORD-ICN-HND, and booked a separate DL award from LGA-ORD. Have 3:50 buffer between when my DL flight lands and KE flight departs, and it doesn't make me feel great. From what I read in the delta forums, people claim SkyTeam will protect incase of IRROPS, any experience with this?

Will report back if the JFK-ICN waitlist ever clears.

I have no experience with IRROPS in this situation. Are you traveling in winter time (risk of snow messing things up)... weather would be my main concern. I'd also consider booking on a DL flight that is not the last flight that will make the connection, so if something bad happens to your flight there is at least one other option. Good news is that DL now arrive at T5 in ORD so you should be able to connect straight to KE without going through security again. And check if DL will check bags all the way through to KE, that is one less thing you want to deal with in ORD (collecting and re-checking will force you land side).

Good luck.

DAK