Cheetah_SA

It's always been like that to my knowledge. The BA award engine is pretty rubbish for partner awards, frankly. Apart from what you have already noted, it gets worse: if BA can find award seats on its own metal on any routing - however impractical - it does not show awards on partner flights. For example, if you wish to fly PEK/HKG in F and BA can find awards seats on your selected date for PEK/LHR/HKG on BA it will proudly produce that result and stop. Similarly it will try to route you SFO/LHR/HKG rather than SFO/HKG and so on.

moondog

TMK, CX only flies PEK-HKG with 2-class planes (no F). Meanwhile, KA flights seem to be in the same boat as AA and AS (i.e. often invisible). But, if you search any route on which a visible partner flies directly (i.e. JFK-NRT rather than JFK-PEK), BA almost always spits out the partner flights ime (I did many searches after I received my Chase cards).

Cheetah_SA

No, BA regularly shows KA flights on the PEK/HKG routes - but only the first 2 flights of the day. The class of travel is immaterial in my example - you will get the same result for any class.

randysea

I just tried AKL-SEA on Nov. 5, checking all the *A searches for two business seats. The grid only showed AKL-SFO-SEA. The info showed multiple possibilities. What was odd was the first pair, NZ6 to LAX and AS459 to SEA, showed 7 business seats on NZ6.

There were three more listing starting with NZ6, but they all showed only 4 seats available.

ckpeter

Are you talking about the info link to flightstats.com? Keep in mind that that is a link to the general / non-award inventory, meaning those are seats for paid tickets, not award seats.

The info link does not reflect award inventory and is there only for your reference.

randysea

Ok, I had not understood the difference. I was talking about the flightstats.com info link. I see now that I missed the significance of the asterisk pointing to "* is a non-award route timetable."

Too bad, actually. awardnexus only shows availability on the SFO connection, which I already have. With UA reducing its flights, what started as a 2.3 hour layover in SFO is now a 6 hour layover. I had some hope when I saw availability on the LAX connection on flightstats I could switch and have a 3 hour shorter layover on that route.

It's still odd that there are two numbers of availability on flightstats for the same flight, NZ6, but not relevant to the awardnexus finding that there are still at least two (the number I entered) mileage seats available on NZ8.

Thanks for the clarification and, as I said above, great work!

ckpeter

I am not too sure, but it may have something to do with the fact that the 4 seats available corresponds to the AS connecting flight having only 4 seats available in F, whereas the other listing has 7 seats available for the AS connecting flights, thus also 7 seats for the same NZ flight.

This could be a kind of married segment logic.

yesitshere

Alright, here another weird one:

15 NOV FRA-CCU (upper classes)

M&M (kvs) finds me LH 750 direct nonstop flight (with availability in First.

Award nexus (and kvs using ana) using all *A variations searches, not only doesn't find availability, it doesn't find a flight, and this on a direct route (!).

ckpeter

LH/M&M is known to provide extra availability to its own members, compared to to other partner programs. This is probably why you don't see this flight available with the ANA backend using either KVS or ANX.

If you are using any Star Alliance miles other than M&M miles, this flight is most likely not available for you to book.

yesitshere

I don't expect them to find seats, but at least tell me that such a flight exist.

ckpeter

I am looking into displaying flights that are operating, but which do not have award seats. However, no decision has been made, as this is a deep change to the system that affects many parts.

For now, to find out what flights may be operating, I suggest using the info link on the segment. It will show you a non-award timetable with almost all direct flights and many connecting flight possibilities too.

yesitshere

maybe using a different color?

ps: I've said it already, but a copy paste function of the results would be very important, and appreciated.

honey4life12

^ I agree. It would be a nice benefit.

I've appreciated this free award service and being able to search 2 weeks at a time. It's been a great help many times and thanks for doing this!

ckpeter

A text output is in the work. Expect to see it in the next few weeks, as one of the new view options.

honey4life12

I'm finding more south pacific seats for one month from now than I did looking a few weeks ago. Does Air New Zealand open more seats up 30 days before departure?