Economy Award Availability

[Pierre_a]

Hi All,

I'm trying to book an itinery to get three people from MEL to LHR around xmas next year. I may try and turn it into a 140k but at the moment I am focused on getting out of Oz.

I am not finding any economy availability being released by Qantas, not even when I search for a single traveller. I am searching approximately 353 days out at 10:30am Brisbane time as this is the time I understood availability is released. In fact QF availability for the direct flight seems to stop on 13th Dec with nothing new being released. I am trying multiple scenarios varying departure ports with the only success being via HKG out of ADL on CX.

Bizarrely the only availability for three people I can find to HKG out of MEL is in business - nothing in Y!

Am I missing something as to the timing of the release of economy tickets by the airlines? My status is Silver for what its worth.

I have an itinery out of ADL via HKG on CX that will work (and avoid most 'taxes') but this would involve overnighting in ADL and a tight connection in HKG - so ideally I'm looking for something simpler.

EDIT: I am looking any time from 20 Dec.

Pierre

 

[sudoer]

Am I missing something as to the timing of the release of economy tickets by the airlines?

Looking at EF it would appear the X bucket (Economy - Award) hasn't been loaded for SYD-LHR past 13/12.

The days leading up to 13/12 are all showing X9 so there should be plenty of availability, might just need to keep checking back.

 

[Pierre_a]

Looking at EF it would appear the X bucket (Economy - Award) hasn't been loaded for SYD-LHR past 13/12.

The days leading up to 13/12 are all showing X9 so there should be plenty of availability, might just need to keep checking back.

Many thanks for this - I'll keep checking for updates.

How can you tell the bucket hasn't been loaded as opposed to all seats being sold? That said, I agree with you as there is an identical pattern of availability QF9 & QF1.

 

[sudoer]

How can you tell the bucket hasn't been loaded as opposed to all seats being sold?

More an educated guess based on the prior availability Went all the way back to 1/11 and am getting X9 consistently til 13/12 - then no X bucket at all.

Potentially the awards could have been loaded and already snapped up, but I'd say that's pretty unlikely given how wide open availability is prior to 13/12.

Will take another look tomorrow to see if anything shows up for 14/12, which may indicate they're being loaded at T-340 for whatever reason.

 

[RichardMEL]

As P1 I see nothing either. I suggest the bucket has not been allocated (probably due to the busy Chrissy period?)

I would find it highly unlikely that there would be ZERO Y seats made available even at that time of year

 

[coyote25]

Just likely they haven't loaded after that 13/12 yet. Most likely doing a manual review of the number of award seat releases to see if QF can squeeze the number even lower than normal for the Xmas period. Obviously with this time of year as soon as released grab them.

 

[Pierre_a]

Just to update this thread.

I have been searching pretty constantly every day for availability for this itinerary and nothing has been released by Qantas post Dec 13th. However as of yesterday we now have inventory available starting from Dec 31st, so for whatever reason Qantas is choosing at this time not to release even economy availability between MEL/SYD & DUB/LHR between those dates.

I've given up in exasperation and booked out of ADL on CX. I will make it into a three 140k RTW fares to compensate for the additional points needed to get to ADL and to fly CX, but truth be told I'd rather have the convenience of jumping on QF9 at the outset rather than screwing around with a positioning flight.

Bizarrely even now I still have plenty of options for J redemption's on CX both ways (but not enough points to cover all three of us there and back) so I am at a loss to explain QFs apparent unwillingness to release even Y space.

Pierre