Air China domestic award/upgrade availability
 

Hi does anyone know how to check Air China domestic award/upgrade availability (i.e PEK-SHA) without calling up their call center?

When I search on Expert Flyer or United it only shows availability routing through international ports i.e HKG, TPE.

You can specify flights on the "Air China Kilometer Redemption Calculator" which shows the number of miles for reward redemption but not sure if it indicates award availability?

https://ffp.airchina.com.cn/appen/en...alculator.html

Just call them. (We have tons of threads on similar topics; phone communication appears to be out of style, but it works when dealing with Chinese airlines).

Understood. Have got some pretty sweet deals such as fees waived by pressing 2 for English over the years. It is nice to look online if dates etc are not certain yet. Can call closer to the time, not travelling until November.

Booking 8 months out is the main issue here because they don't like this.

What's generally the sweet spot between having cheap Y fares and upgrade availability? Early November isn't a particularly busy time I would have thought with golden week out of the way and heading into winter.

While I understand that using CA points before they expire is challenging, you should still try to focus on maximizing their value. Unless the expiry date was very close in, I would never use miles for a SHA-PEK upgrade myself.

Take your point and agree. I wouldn't normally on such a short hop however, I have 15k points and don't live in Beijing anymore, I only get up to China once a year, so there limited options to redeem. I can't upgrade PEK-DYG (Zhangjiajie) which is the main destination for the trip either as they have "First" and no business so apparently can't upgrade from economy. End result is looking at upgrading on the A350-900 PEK-SHA but would need a PE ticket (i think) at around RMB1,200 discounted. Open to other suggestions...

Got you. I suggest that you try calling them in order to unload those 15k points for a straight up J award booking.

Yep but can only go less than 800km in J on a straight award booking, so like Qingdao, Taiyuan... pretty limited in use.

Could book one leg in Y on PEK-DYG so at least save a couple of hundred bucks even if not doing it in style....

I've been eyeing off reward availability on this route as well and it only seems to become available at the start of the month before. So for June, should be available from 1 May. Hope this helps.

Domestic seasonality change. Some flights get cancelled for winter season. Many flights schedule won't be finalized until the first two weeks of October for winter season. The same thing happens again for March summer season.