FF Seats - When are Qantas FF seats released (2012 Travel)

[Buck]

The Qantas FF website advises that FF seats can be released up to 353 days in advance.

I'm planning to travel Brisbane/Sydney to Japan in January 2012. Today is the first day my travel dates show up as live on the Qantas website - but for a 2 month window through December 2011 and January 2012 there are less than a small handful of days that currently show FF availability.

I've previously been doing reaearch based on 2011 dates and there had always been availability on 90% of the dates - so I am at a loss to understand why dates 12 months from now are not available?

I'm somewhat flexible in my travel dates -- but the absence of any real options seems very strange. Several years of points accumulation for this trip seem now to be wasted. Sure - I could go an 'any seat' reward - but at over 1 million points a bit excessive, when classic awards should be around 360000 for 4 pax.

Would more QANTAS FF seats likely become available? - if so when?

Or - is this some sort of FF blackout?

 

[NM]

January is always a period of peak demand for leisure travel and as such award inventory is limited. Qantas award seats are released a maximum of 353 days ahead, but there is no guarantee or requirement that the 353 day threshold will result in finding availability.

Once the initial allocation of award seats has been consumed, Qantas does review the situation from time to time. However, such reviews generally seem to take place when they have a better idea of expected loadings for the flight and that is not going to be many months ahead.

Seeking 4 award seats on the same flights is always going to be a challenge, especially if looking at premium cabin awards or flights to popular destinations during the time you want to fly.

 

[aliens]

Japan is a popular place to go in January due to the ski season

 

[ozbeachbabe]

If you subscribe to Expert Flyer (EF) you can create an alert for award seats eg U class for Business so if some are released EF will immediately send you an email telling you award seats have been released for your preferred date.

You could then set yourself a notification with your email provider to sms you whenever you receive an email from Expert Flyer so you can grab the seats asap. If you are a gold member of AFF you receive a discount on Expert Flyer membership but personally IMHO it's worth it's weight in gold.

You can also create alerts for a specific seat eg if looking for 80A or 80K on the A380 & it's already taken, EF will email you if that seat number was to become free down the track.

You may have better luck if you have two bookings with 2 pax in each as easier to find 2 seats than 4.

Seats are released for the particular day when it is 0000 GMT as I found out when I was looking for seats at 0955 EST then 10 minutes later at 1005, the next day had been released.

 

[serfty]

...
Seats are released for the particular day when it is 0000 GMT as I found out when I was looking for seats at 0955 EST then 10 minutes later at 1005, the next day had been released.

I have found that seats become available online after 0000UTC¹. However one can normally call QFF and get an earlier crack at them before 11am on the same calendar day. Note this costs the 'assisted award booking fee'.

¹ currently 11am AEDST in MEL/SYD/CBR/HBA & 10AM AEST in BNE - all will be 10AM AEST after Daylight savings finishes.

 

[oz_mark]

¹ currently 10am AEDST - will be 11AM next month

Why is it changing?

 

[serfty]

Why is it changing?

It's not - I've adjusted my post ...

 

[Pushka]

The seats are released just under a year ahead. I haunted the website for weeks for my travel dates in July 2012 and while I got a seat over there, they basically blacked out the whole period from mid July returning from Heathrow to Australia. For all levels of travel. And then, for those few seats (maybe on two days in the whole months) that were released, they tried to deduct Premium Economy Points for sectors that only had Economy seats.

 

[serfty]

The seats are released just under a year ahead. ...

It is 353 days!

Today you can book up until 30th September.

One way to work this out is to open a spreadsheet and enter the formula:

=TODAY()+353

 

[Pushka]

It is 353 days!

which is um,

just under a year ahead.

Didnt help me much though, they never released the seats!:evil:

 

[serfty]

which is um,



Didnt help me much though, they never released the seats!:evil:

The point is that if you know the precise date you prefer to travel, you know when to start looking.

For example, any award seats (if any) for a flight on Nov 16th 2012 will first become available online at 10am MEL time on 4th November 2011. (=DATE(2012,11,16)-353)

 

[jukebox333]

The point is that if you know the precise date you prefer to travel, you know when to start looking.

For example, any award seats (if any) for a flight on Nov 16th 2012 will first become available online at 10am MEL time on 4th November 2011. (=DATE(2012,11,16)+353)

Possibly (=Date(2012,11,16)-353), Serfty?

(but I'm sure OP knows what you mean!)

 

[Brisbane Flyer]

Booked yesterday, the 16th of Jan, two one way J tickets, LAX to BNE for 3 Jan 2014.
Had to use the 'assisted booking' as Jan 1-3 was showing up empty in all classes.

I've done this other years, find the availability is always there 353 days in advance, but for high demand flights, have always used the assisted booking to make sure I get what I want in terms of days and travel classes.

 

[Timtammi]

I have had pretty much the same experience as Brisbane Flyer but I think if you are not a WP it might be harder. Both DH and I are so I think that helps.
We got 4 x J seats MEL-LAX but needed to split across 2 days (2 out on Friday 2 on Saturday) but to be honest that worked just fine for our circumstances, we probably could have all got there on the same day but I think 2 may have needed to go via SYD or BNE to achieve it. On the way back I got 3 x J LAX-MEL all on the same flight, DH is coming back via CX on his Asia Miles points.