Airlines will add and remove award availability as their load factors vary. It depends on route, cabin class, etc. Some airlines are believed (I wouldn't say "known") to release additional award tickets within a week of departure.

One related general question I have is with regards to awards with a planned stopover (e.g. Hawaii - Continental US (stop) - Europe), especially if the planned stopover is a few months long.

Am I correct in understanding that one would need to wait until the entire itinerary was within the 330 day booking window? If so, are there any best practices to getting such an award at a lower level? In my experience, Hawaii would be long full by the time I was in the window for the full trip.

I'm currently in the early planning stages of such a trip on Star Alliance and am just trying to gather as much strategy as possible.

Thanks.

You can always change your itenerary as it becomes available. Probably costs $75-150 to add a city or whatever, but waived for elite members. What you can do, esp for UA/AA, is to do your trip and add Hawaii for whatever dates are available. Both allow free date changes outside of 21 days (AA all date changes are free, I think), so when your dates are open, call and get them to change for free.

Also, outside of holidays, Hawaii is often available a few months or even weeks out.

One way awards are available on same carriers, which solves the problem of the return date that's outside the 330 day booking window.

For a round-trip award booked at the 330 day window, I've also been able to call and add the return when that date becomes available. It all depends on the carrier, of course.

The award availability is dynamic. There isn't a set number of seats that is reserved for awards on airlines. Some airlines are good for releasing unsold inventory to award buckets very close to departure date. This works well for business and first class.

I normally book my award flights very close to departure date as I don't normally know where I am in 30 days.

About a month ago I booked tickets to Cabo for next April. Flight times weren't ideal but we needed to lock in dates. I looked today on usair and availablility is wide open :mad:

UsAir's change fees (even just to earlier/later flights) are horrible so we're stuck. Oh well.

you can change the travel date up to a year. within the year, you can change the date to a different date without fee?

If I booked a ticket Oct 9th 2012 for travel date of December 30th 2012 but I couldn't travel on travel date and I call to extend the travel date to July 2013, Can I call again to have the travel date changed without charge? I can change as many times as I want without fee for up to a year from flight booking date??

1. After it's less than 21 days before departure, most of them charge extra for you pouncing upon that (unless you have enough status).

2. Just because you can grab outbound wihin a week of departure doesn't mean you can grab the return part then nor does it guarantee that you'll be able to grab the return part later. So how do you use this for a round trip if you know you have to return at a certain time?

(It's of course exactly because they know most people can't use it at that point that they release inventory at that point! :eek:)

The ticket validity is normally 12 months of the issuance i.e. ticketing date. It can sometimes be extended but I haven't heard that they had done this for award tickets. Of course you ca always redeposit and rebook.

That is part of the fun of booking award flights. If it was that easy everyone would do it. That is also why award booking companies exist. For those people not familiar enough with booking or just don't want to spend that amount of time looking for flights. Part of this game is being flexible. Another is checking out all the options.

For our trip to Greece next year, I saw many open possibilities leaving on LH the first three weeks of June. I needed to book a round trip in order to get a stopover in Athens before flying on to Rhodes on Aegean. Aegean does not release their seats on the same time table as other *A carriers. By the time I could book Aegean, the LH seats were gone. I spent the better part of a Sunday, checking flights from the US to Europe on LH, UA, LX, OS, A3, US. I had an itinerary I could live with when I thought about checking flights from Montreal. Bingo! A much better route was found. But, I needed to move up my departure date 2 days, and moved my return date up one, and will spend an extra day in Athens. I then spent another hour and a half (yes really) spoon feeding our route to the UA agent. Three business class tickets round trip for under $120 in taxes and fees per ticket. Well worth the effort IMHO.

This game we play takes time, patience, a good credit rating, and a little luck. Will I continue looking at routes and available upcoming seats. Probably not. I have my tickets in hand (so to speak) and I am happy with that.

I am about 95% certain that you still can. I once made two changes to an award ticket because I first needed to change a date, and later because I found better routing and eliminated a stop in NY. Neither time was I charged. This was with AA last year. I haven't seen actual chapter and verse spelled out in their Awards TC on this, so I can't quote but, am only going on personal experience.

How can you check availability of first/business class tickets on CX if you want to redeem AA miles without having to call AA? It's not on AA's site anymore.

Quantas or BA.

I tend to book 6 days out to as close in as the day of departure. I'm typically looking at either long haul C or F cabin bookings to AP or EU from the US or to Hawaii.

I'm usually booking *A using UA or US points.

That said I've done a number of CX tickets inside 48 hours prior to departure leveraging BA points.

So long as you are looking for not more than 2 seats on the same flights- finding space usually isn't a problem.

I have in the past booked our family of 4 to EU in biz day of departure with no return booking in hand - this was with OW. The return worked out - patience waiting out the airline to release seats was all that was required.

As a general rule I find airlines get very generous with releasing award seats closer in to departure - as they become confident of projected flight loads and premium cabin sales levels. For now this process worked reasonably well for me.

QF and BA give CX availability for AA miles? I thought that when some airlines release award seats, it's specific to each partner airline.

Partner space is generally alliance-wide.

Just be aware that using both these sites to search CX seats are "iffy" at best. I've tried both before as they show several availability of seats, when I called immediately to AA to book, was told NO seats available. I get the feeling that these sites "favors" their own FF members and seats maybe available only if you use their miles--not 100% certain but just a gut feeling.

That's why I use JL to double check/confirm, only thing is JL website for some reason keep error out on JFK-HKG segment

Although the partner space may be alliance wide, each airline holds award seats for their FF members only. Just because Austrian Air shows award seats available, those award seats may not be available to UA members using UA miles. Those seats may be only available to Miles&More members.

Planning a trip to Hawaii in September and been checking UA award miles for our dates which are available. However, we currently only have enough miles for two r/t economy tickets. I was going to wait to book until May when we'd have enough miles to upgrade to first class. What are the rules on upgrading if we book economy class now? We have no status with UA.