Devyan1

IAH-HNL on a 3 Cabin is actually quite a nice plane...lie flat in C. Business from ORD-HNL direct will just be a standard recliner I believe

sammyindc

It's actually the older configuration 777 so only recliner in C.
Try and look for the EWR/IAD routes as they sometimes (quite often recently) have a 767-400ER intl configuration with BF lie flat seat.
I booked a flight for next week and plenty of saver award available.

noelr

Just throwing this out there, since I'm looking to snag a biz award from DEN-NRT, I did see one biz seat appear on DEN-NRT on Aug. 5. It's not there any more, but was around for a few hours yesterday.

I'm just hoping to snag a seat in Feb in place of my DEN-LAX-NRT. Doubt I'll get it, but I'll be keeping an eye out.

iluv2fly

Took it last Thursday and it is the old configuration. Luckily I was in F and got a flat bed. But the IFE...oh my.

psychoidiot

For ORD- CAN (1st week of August before August 12th, returning in October sometime), I was checking for Star Alliance flights using the UA system (yes, I probably should use ANA but I don't have miles in my account) and one leg always requires a UA flight. When I call in they always quote me UA flights start itineraries, how do I get star alliance partners only? It used to be if I called in and asked if they could find a ANA flight or OZ flight only, they could do so, but now none of the options available do that. Not sure how people using their UA miles (I don't have status).

I know no airline flies straight there but my mom was hoping for a ORD-ICH-CAN (on OZ) sort of flight and not a ORD-DEN-NRT-CAN (UA-UA-OZ) flight at 65,000 miles in economy. They also only have July 28/30th available for that routing.

Should I wait or what is way to get a itinerary on a star alliance partner? (preferably OZ or ANA but she can route through Beijing on EVA? Air China?)

It is high season though, maybe she should just buy a ticket?

Duke787

You can trick ANA tool if you don't have miles

See the second part of this post: http://thepointsguy.com/2011/06/how-...-availability/

SidewinderX

Have you tried the work around recently? I tried myself and it didn't seem to work for me...

cheltzel

One of our FlyerTalk colleagues (sbm12) has written an very handy GreaseMonkey script that enables the *A award search button on the ANA web site. It is described in the following post.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/star-...-searches.html

To use this, you must use a browser that supports GreaseMonkey scripts. FireFox does and I am sure there are others.

FlyWorld

A few months after 3/3, I observed a drastic reduction in R space across the system, particularly on transoceanic flights out of SFO. But, for most of the past year, I've had no trouble finding Saver inventory in Business or First on a variety of international routes to/from SFO. In fact, this was the one and only bright spot in the entire system for me. The past few weeks, I've been doing a variety of searches on familiar routes to/from Asia and Europe, and I am experiencing an enormous drop in Saver availability for Business or First. Whereas in the past, I could not find a route *without* Saver space, now I'm having to work harder than ever before to find *any* Saver space. It looks from my perspective like Saver inventory has been drastically cut within the last few months from prior levels. This seems roughly correlated with the change to O/ON buckets.

Any other data points or perspectives?

AZjohns

I agree with your observations 100%. But you will likely see others that post that do not.

craz

Its just the way PMCO did things rather then how PMUA did them.

The New UA (like the old PMCO) wants people to buy the premium seats or use Miles and co-pays, and only as it gets very close to the departure date when it looks to the rev dept as if they wont sell them will they open them up for award tkts.There are probably some markets where they know seats wont be sold so then they will open them up earlier

FlyWorld

I started a new thread but my post was moved to this thread.

A key distinction is that I am seeing reductions in all Saver inventory, both close in and far out. I'm simply seeing much less Saver inventory the past few months than I ever saw before, regardless of time horizon.

I don't fully understand your comment about miles and co-pay. Doesn't that strategy require R space, which they've also drastically curtailed?

We all know that they don't fill the premium cabins with paying passengers.

It seems like the only remaining path to sit in a premium cabin, short of shelling out an obscene amount of cash, is to be selected by $mi$ek's SHARES algorithm for an HOD offer.

craz

Ive been able to grab some BF seats a few months ago for flights that were 11 months out. When I recently tried doing so for some friends Zippo showed up (not the same flights or dates as mine are). Another friend grabbed SleasyPass in Y for his son heading overseas for a yr of schooling. @ T-23:55 he was able to get BF saver on the same flight saving a bunch of miles, Saver Y didnt appear

So it seems CO has changed how they did things which before 1/1/13 was to allocate some Saver seats at 11 months out to almost Zippo and only when they see they wont sell them open them to Award and UPs miles & copay.

Yes the UPs need to be in whatever bucket but they also can see if anyones on the WL and then decide what they want to open Award seats or UPs for the $$ and miles. If no one is on the WL then award seats it will be. I have no proof to this just my feelings, that they would rather grab the $$ from the UP then give the seat away for just Miles.

Im sure certain routes they do sell some J,D and Z while others next to nothing at the last min. And I dont blame them for holding back, after all thats where their $$ are. It doesnt work with me since my Game is to grab whatever is available when its available even in Y and to constantly check thuings and switch Dates or Routings whenever something better shows up.Its extremely rare for me to not have 6-12 changes made to each of my Intl Award reses and as a 1K its all Zippo

Its really no different then what LH does with its F cabin, we dont see it till its apx 1 week out and thats if theres anything left, I found even LH holding back on flights that were closer to empty then full but it seems they too are palying the same game as CO is

So I learnt to grab say a JFK-IAD-XXX-YYY which I really dont want but would do if nothing else should open. Then when I see say JFK-XXX or JFK-YYY or JFK-IAD-YYY I switch or should something out of EWR or PHL open that works better.At times its all Zippo even during Off-Peak times.

We need to acknowledge the Game thats being played and learn how best to work with it and around it

FlyWorld

This seems about right to me.

As recently as October of last year, I had a much better experience with Saver inventory.

So, what's the strategy now?

We should use miles to buy regular price and then monitor for saver inventory then "refund" the original and re-purchase at saver?

Surprised there has not been more dialog about this. It's a huge change for the worse and frankly, this decimates the one and only thing I thought was still good about COdbaUA.

Now there is nothing left but a shell.

Duke787

I've had no issues with using the work around recently save for some issues with viewing availability for partners at ~330 days out (it's been only showing me ~315 days out recently, no issue with viewing ANA availability on this front).