Pookynubbers

I've got a armful of UR points and was planning on using Korean to get back (one-way) to the US from either SIN or ICN. In the past award seats have been easy to find - but I'm not finding hardly ANYTHING. I've tried focusing in on ICN to DFW,ORD,ATL,SFO and there's very little avaiable if at all in Prestige or First and even Econ (which I just started adding)

I'm wondering if there's been a dramatic change recently or perhaps I'm doing somegthing wrong. I'm not opposed to using another airline - as I mentioned I have a ton of UR points and about 150K in MR points.

Kacee

You're not doing anything wrong. Korean Air Reduced Award Availability

Anyone have insight on what's going on?

CaliforniaSteve

I had some luck with a transfer of UR points and TY points over to Singapore Airlines. They seem to be very good at availability for economy and premium economy seats (at least to SFO). Business is a little dicier, but if you're patient and flexible as to your dates, the flights can be had in business. As an example, my target date for a return flight from Hong Kong to SFO was December 10th. I was flexible for an earlier flight and I found one in business for December 5th in business. Redemption is 88,000 KrisFlyer miles one way. The other option for UR is to transfer to Mileage Plus, where a business redemption is 90,000 one way. There, you have United (ugh), Air China (just as ugh), Air Canada, Asiana and ANA for the main TransPac partners, or Lufthansa if you want to fly to the East Coast.

Kacee

Yes KF redemptions are still a good option.

But if this is not just a temporary reduction it really sucks. KE was one of the last carriers to release a substantial amount of quality premium cabin space.

Pookynubbers

I really lucked out. I was looking for 3 - yes 3 J seats from SE Asia to US (one-way) and was lucky enough to find them on Singapore Airlines transferred in some MR and UR points. The agent actually held all 3 seats for me - for 5 days! Waiting for the tx to complete and then going for it. Now for the outbound....

wxman22

They are waiting for the implementation/rollout of the FE-DL Joint Venture.
A lot will change at that point.

Kacee

That makes sense.

CaliforniaSteve

I've found while booking my tickets through Sing (and wading through some problems with the points transfer along the way) that there are some very, VERY good customer service reps with SQ and some not so good ones. Not that it was scientific or anything, but we found that calling at night (Singapore time) got us better service than during the Singapore day shift.

Pookynubbers

My call happened to be in the evening as well. A delighfult person - very professional. Even waited for me to add my 2 companions to my authorized traveler section which took a moment or 12.

ramolnar

You picked the ports of entry with less availability. I'm looking for return tickets for my wife and I from ICN. Earlier today, I searched every US gateway for ICN-US over a few days in July, in first and business class. Here's a summary of what I found:
LAX - 4+ business and 3+ first class seats basically every day
LAS - 2+ business seats most days, 1 first class seat
JFK - 2+ first class seats about half the time
SEA - 2+ business class seats most days
The other flights (ATL, DFW, IAD, ORD, SFO, YVR, YYZ) never had more than 1 seat in Business or First, and often had zero. Dallas had zero business seats for all of July, for instance.

KosherKimchee

I was seeing this as well into 2019 and now I cant find a single day with 3+ F seats. At most finding 2 F seats ex/to LAX.

Diplomatico

Don't feel bad. I couldn't find a single flight in May with an award seat ex/to LAX. Any award seat.