Have you looked farther out into the fall/winter? Finding J/F (I assume you're looking for that) in August at this date is going to be very, very hard. Especially trying to get 3 together.

We are considering Africa for summer 2024 - I already have my calendar bookmarked to begin searching for seats in July of this year.

I think we are in a little bit of a transition phase, and although my credit card miles are pliling up not being used, I am still optimistic that I will be able to redeem in the future. Currently there is a sharp increase in wages partially because of a lower supply of workers (pilots, CSR, airport employees etc) So CEO's of the airlines are not aggressively increasing supply of flights to anywhere near what we had 4 years ago and this pressure is causing prices to rise and "excess" space that miles use to fill up are no longer offered, and with airlines moving to a non-fixed point model even limited "excess" space is being filled with redemptions that cost 200k, 300k or more points round trip in business class.

Paid J fares sub $2500 from North America to Europe/Africa/Asia are getting harder to find too. Last year I didn't use points as I was finding good flights for $2000 to europe rather than 140,000 miles for the few saver awards that I could find with multiple stops and 5 hour layovers.

Finally finding the "Saver" award inventory, I have been noticing a trend with several airlines to wait 60 or less days before departure. So with that in mind, finding those seats to Africa in August, they might still appear if you keep looking in June.

Hmm I just started looking recently since covid and this is also my observation. Very hard to find any availability in routes I'm interested in..

This thread about Avios-only flights is topical here. Limited routes, looks designed more for marketing impact than a real trend, but I have to think some Flyertalkers will end up on these flights. Could be fun to do for anyone who can make their schedules align.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...y-flights.html

There's a dearth of availability to Asia.

I'm trying to book for a J/F seat to HAN from any US gateway for June, and came up with no possible option for AA miles or * alliance. Previously waiting 2 weeks before departure would almost guarantee at least 1 seat.

May have to shell out $1k for a one way to HAN at this rate. Miles are getting more and more useless...

6/19 has SFO-YVR-ICN-HAN available, although it's Y on ICN-HAN.

Oh really? Where do you see that? AC is charging 485k for it...

1k for a OW in J sounds pretty good to me.

I have found AA.com is not searching the same for award tickets as it used to. I found some early June awards last week, but nothing past the 7th. I’d certainly recommend calling in to check for awards.

Sorry $1k for one way in Y actually...

UA.

Big difference between Y and J.

All i found was lax to han on singapore airlines with 1.5 hour stop in nrt and a 14 hr stop in singapore on 6/27 for 128.5k but even that was waitlist.

Appreciate it. Waitlist is a toughie, I've never gotten it to go through...

For going across the world, yes. It's for my father in law, and would like for him to have a nice flight than what he is used to in Y.