BA-EC award booking on AA YYZ-PVG
 

Greetings,

I am new to this forum, and new to awards booking. So if the answer to my question is obvious, which I fear it may be, please excuse my newbie-ness.

I recently came into a significant amount of BA miles through a credit card points transfer. In February, I booked a flight from YYZ to PVG on AA for Wednesday May 10.

My employer is allowing me to take more time off which means I can now leave on Saturday May 6. So I called BA to make the change and they said there is no availability for awards customers. I called AA who in turn referred me back to BA.

In all your years of experience, is there anyway to "work the system" and get on that flight? Or am I flogging a dead horse?

Check for availability for the flight you want on AA.com (AAdvantage award) every day.

When you see it open, call BA to change.

If it doesn't open (and it could open the night before, or the same day even), no chance you'll get on.

There's availability on May 4, 7 and 9, but not on May 5, 6, 8

Thanks for the quick replies...

I realize that flights fill up fast on weekends, but there are still dozens of seats left on this particular flight. I assume that BA has access to a limited number of seats available per AA flight. BA's quota must have been reached.

That flight will probably takeoff with empty seats, and I will miss 4 extra days in China due to a technicality. Is there anyway to prevent that from happening?

1. Someone just told you that you can book the 7th. You can keep checking for the 6th.

2. Just because you see empty seats on a flight, it doesn't mean they're not sold.

3. Why should an airline give out any empty seat for free? They are a business after all.

Please look around the forums and do some reading as these are questions that come up all the time.

Not true, BA has access to the same inventory at AA. The yield management software at AA is quite famous, it is very good at predicting demand, including last minute purchases. This allows AA to oversell some routes, and of more interest to you, to leave seats free until quite late (confident in those last-minute sales materializing). This also results in considerable differences in award availability by date. You can check up to the day of travel, and AA will convert empty seats into availability for awards (at least it does for EXP).

Thanks a lot guys, you've given me a better understand of how the system works.