smilee

Are we all a little off? I was just talking with a friend - and giving him a referral for a Plat Amex and telling him about using miles and the value of booking premium class travel. Anyhow in my conversation I was talking about British Airways points and the great availability that they offer with the only drawback being slightly higher fees/taxes. I was saying that the trade off for the better availability is the higher fees.

OK so now its time to look for seats. I was showing him how on BA’s new website you can see the whole year at a glance. Anyhow I was looking at several cities and in summary.

Business Class
San Francisco - London
London– Phoenix
Seattle – London
Vancouver – London
Miami – London

And in many of the cases a search for 1 seat yielded results in the 22 – 50 days available in the year. In other words there is about 85-90% of the days there is not even 1 seat available.

So is it realistic to think that 10-15% of the days available in the upcoming year is classified as GOOD availability?

windowontheAside

I don't think I've ever considered the availability to be good.

Don't get me wrong. I think the Avios scheme overall is good. But availability is only a part of that and I don't think it's good at all. I came over to BAEC from American, and I was used to their scheme which I would describe as good (At least then - may have changed since). There, you could pretty much find tickets in any month you wanted to travel, but may need to be flexible on specific days.

shorthauldad

Just out of interest, why did you say that?

smilee

I guess I wasn't clear - seeing how it has now moved to BA thread.

I was looking at all miles programs Air Canada, Delta, United, American British Airways etc. Anyhow my question is I used to think that BA had some of the best award availability. Look at some of the bloggers.

Recently from The Points Guy talking about BA availability from LAX-LHR on the new A380
Other bloggers mention the same thing as well that generally BA has "Good Availability" In the same argument we generally say that Delta has "Poor" availability.

So just how good is good? Somewhere in the 10-15% range???

Prospero

As smilee kindly PMed the BA mod team to clarify this enquiry does not specifically relate to the Executive Club or the Avios currency, so we'll move this thread back to MilesBuzz!!! for continued discussion.

Prospero
Moderator: BAEC forum

mia

Note that this availability is when redeeming AA miles for travel on BA, and availability is not necessarily the same when redeeming BA miles for travel on BA. The AA/BA award inventory swap is a special case, on most programs award availability is better using native miles.

smilee

Yes this was taken from The Points Guy, and he was searching regular availability on AA.com for BA flights LAX-LHR on the new A380. Indeed there are some A380 flights

I have read on other sites such as Frugal Travel Guy, View from the Wing, One Mile at a Time, UPGRD etc and I think we are skewed in our reviews. Other bloggers/ FF enthusiasts say that there is TONS or GREAT or EXCELLENT availability, when in reality we are talking about 10% to maybe even 50% availability.

By the way, I just used BA as an example as they have a new YEAR view available now which is quite nice. But we could use the same example for availability for airlines like LH, AC, AA, UA, CX and many others.

How do you define "GOOD" availability - 10% of dates with 1 seat???

mikew99

I consider BA's fuel surcharges to be considerably higher, not only slightly higher. I have so far avoided any redemptions on BA, but I would probably have to redeem for F on BA just to get any value out my miles.

How can you tell how many seats were originally offered for redemption bookings? Perhaps there were a lot more, but they were all snatched up months ago?

iolairemcfadden

Please would you explain where to find this? I'm not that familiar with BA, but I'm used to seeing a month at a glance but not a year.