Does anyone know what time JL seats are released on the QF booking site? Also, because I would have to ring QF to add flights to a booking, is there anything wrong with booking flights on a different ticket and then cancelling them while you’re talking to QF in order to hold the seats and add them to an itinerary?
My recent experience is that release dates are very inconsistent ATM across multiple airlines. I've nearly completed a 318k booking and the route map is now almost unrecognisable from what was originally planned. Maybe a lot of people have recently started snapping up a lot of J availability for the second half of next year, but my impression is that the variable supply has been caused by the airlines themselves shutting the supply off abruptly and even cancelling already released awards.
Since you asked about JL, I'll start with them. Only weeks ago JL had plenty of availability from about 360 - 330 days out for both JL48 (HEL-HND) and JL51 (HND-SYD) but recently nearly all the JL48 availability disappeared virtually overnight. At the same time, JL51 seats were still available. I When I looked at LHR - HND there was reasonable availability for JL42 (which has a long transit in HND) but only sporadic availability for JL44. As luck would have it, I just got the JL44 / JL51 combo just 2 days ago at 359 days out.
Case 2: QF had been showing a steady stream of J availability on the SYD - JNB route from start of June next year to such a degree that I had no concerns about getting them for the end of July 2022, despite the fact that I have no status and couldn't get them till 293 - 297 days out. Then, poof, they all vanished and despite checking every day religiously, no new availability showed up and there's still none today (for NBs, at least). Luckily I had booked MEL - HKG - JNB at 360 days with CX as insurance, but it did chew up several thousand extra kms.
Case 3: QR - researching a variety of QR routes, it was difficult to put together combos of JNB - DOH with onward flights to many European cities. QR had good availability JNB - DOH at 330 - 360 days out (with the possible exception of QR1478) but DOH to ARN/NCE/CPH/HEL/ZRH etc had no availability for connecting flights until about 2 months after most of the JNB - DOH availability would have been gone. That makes planning a trip a nightmare.
EDIT: I changed the sequence of our itinerary a bit and opted for JNB - LHR - KEF instead of JNB - DOH - ARN/CPH etc. and had no trouble getting J for both flights on BA. People may not like BA's taxes but when it comes to award availability they are often very good
Re, your other point about holding seats on another booking: it is a few years ago now but I had booked the last J seats on a QF SYD - LAX flight as part of a OW award. I subsequently cancelled them in favour of a different date, and out of interest I checked each hour to see how long it took for my released seats to show up back in inventory. It took 11 hours - so maybe your plan of waiting on line to re-book seats you have on another booking could be a long process.
