I have heard calling 330 days out is the best time and I have heard 331 days out.

If you have done this often, is 331 fairly standard? Do some airlines have totally different timeframes? Do some not show any awards at 330-331 days, but at some vague unknown point?

I have no experience in doing this but have read about people calling at midnight on the 'right day' to get their award seats.

What about non-US based airlines? Are their guidelines similar? I have called a few times lately for coach seats 331 days out and found nothing and gotten vague answers from agents. I am trying to plan ahead so I can get flights that I want. My dates are VERY flexible, but I hate to lock in flights/routings that are 3rd or 4th choice 330 days out

Which airlines are you familiar with? What is the 'right date' to call? Or is that a myth and some airlines don't load award seats until they 'feel like it'?

Help me demystify

It isn't so much as the award seats are loaded at 330/331 days, but the flights themselves are loaded at this time, which includes (possible) award seats. However, they can choose to load no award seats when the flight is loaded, and then all bets are off. Almost all airlines using one of the major GDS systems will load flights during this time period.

So unless you know that your specific airline loads them immediately at 331 days out, it isn't as critical to try and book awards at that time? Or is the whole thing just a cr*pshoot?

I have a lot of things working against me...
1. I have no prior experience in booking 330/331 days out
2. I have next to no experience booking int'l awards
3. I am booking an itinerary that might have little availability in general

I guess I shall just considering this a BIGGG learning experience I just don't want to screw up planning my trip due to lack of knowledge or understanding of the system.

What I do have going for me is that my trip is 11 months out

Thanks

What you have going for you at the time the flight is loaded is that if any award seats whatsoever are in there at all, you have first crack at them. (However, your return won't yet be loaded.)

In most cases, the airlines will load at least some award seats at the outset of booking. The number will vary depending on their exepcted load factor. They may add seats later depending how seats are selling.

The general rule is to either book early or book late. Early, you catch the seats before anyone else can get them. Late, the airline might decide they have too many empty seats and decide to release some more award seats.

And the other thing is to travel when others aren't. Seats will be more available for off-season trips. I just checked Delta, and was able to find Sky Saver seats to Honolulu for late January, and HNL is one of the harder destinations.

A few pointers:

1. "Midnight" may not be midnight in your time zone. Many airlines are headquartered in the Central time zone. So you may want to call at 9pm or 10pm if you live in California.

2. Why not call at 331 days? Worst thing that happens is that you wait on hold for a few minutes and then learn that you have to call back the next day. Better safe than sorry.

3. If your routing is anything other than a simple domestic roundtrip, I would strongly encourage you to telephone the airline rather than trying to book online. If you search the various airline forums, you'll learn that people have had far more success booking international awards via telephone.

4. Do your homework. If you are travelling internationally, make sure you write down all of the partner airlines that have flights to your destination. For example, you can fly United to Paris, but they may not have any seats available. Some CSRs will not bother to suggest other partners such as Lufthansa, SAS and Air Canada, which also fly to London. If you have done your homework, you can ask the CSR to check these carriers. And if you are really sharp, you will look up the routings. For example, you can ask the agent to check Air Canada via Toronto and Montreal. Or United via SFO, LAX, JFK, IAD and ORD. Don't assume that this will happen automatically.

Good luck!

This account is a bit tough to follow but bear with me. Earlier this year I booked 2 ATL-HNL award flights on DL. At 11:59 p.m. ET I had a screen showing my desired date (331 days and 30 seconds away) as of out of range. At 12:00 midnight I clicked refresh and every one of Delta's flights for my date were available as SkySaver . This was actually my return flight as I had gotten lucky and in the same session found SkySaver availability during my ideal departure range. Just in case I didn't get so lucky I also put a hold on two tickets the day my original departure date was first bookable, which Delta does a courtesy for up to 14 days, that simply expired when I didn't call back the next day to confirm my departure. The beauty of what I did by finding SkySaver availability on a departure flight 4 days earlier than I originally reserved, in addition to the 1000 bonus miles per ticket that I received for booking online, was that I got to make my trip duration 18 days-4 days longer than the maximum using the 2 week hold method (Let's face it 14 days in Hawaii over Christmas just isn't enough ).

I have called at 331 days twice -- told 'no availability' each time, even for a range of 3-4 days. I am calling during 'business hours' tho -- maybe I need to find out when 'midnight' is and try that.It is definitely int'l and I have been calling the award desk to check availability.
I am trying for a partner award and know the itineraries.
Thanks

Do non-US airlines load award seats on a different schedule than the 330/331 days? ie. AF, KLM, or BA?

That typeface and blue color is really hard to read.

I think the mistake is assuming that award seats are all "loaded" on a specific date. They may or may not be, depending on the airline.

I'm sure that in at least some cases, yield management algorithms are used to help control award inventory and award seats are released periodically over the course of the year, not all at once. I'm familiar with booking awards on United. In fact, there is a thread on the United forum about Kremmen's experiment with this.

Just as one example of my own experience, last year I was looking for availability of a Business Class Saver award SFO-SYD on United. I started looking online frequently about six or eight weeks in advance of flying, and I noticed that the inventory of award availability on that route often changed wildly each day I went online to check. (I looked at a range of dates for both outbound and return flights, and I looked at other classes besides Biz as well. Also, United's website gives you an idea of HOW MANY award seats are available on each flight in each class, showing a number 0 to 9, where 9 means 9 or more.) I finally snagged the dates I wanted about a month in advance of flying. Obviously, that particular award inventory on those particular dates on those particular flights in that particular class of service had not been "loaded" 330 days in advance, but only a month in advance. @:-)

Also, you would probably get better help on this if you told us what airline(s) you are trying to book on. Since different airlines probably do things differently, and there are people with expertise on all the major airlines on FlyerTalk, you would probably get more specific answers to your questions.

That is VERY interesting. I would not have thought you could get that route with only a month's notice. Maybe then I shouldn't worry so much about 'locking' it in 330 days out or being 'out of luck'...

I am happy to do that. I was also posting this in hopes of sharing/learning general info for myself and others who may have these questions. In my case, I am trying took book KLM (w/DL miles) for LAX-AMS. I am going to work on finding out what the award fare code (coach) is and see if I can monitor availability online instead of calling the award desk 3-4 times a week.

Thanks