Newbie Here - Question about seat allocations for Classic Awards

[Bellaballerina]

Hi Everyone
I am Bella - New to the forum!

I am sure that this has been answered in the past but I am going to ask as I am sure you all know much more than me!

Looking to book a flight from Honolulu to Melbourne in January 2013. The date is 12th January.
I know that the date is not available yet, but will be in a couple of days.

I am worried as there are no classic awards available at all in January 2013 for Honolulu to Melbourne.

The any seat awards are a lot of points, even with the points + pay.

Booked a Melbourne to L.A flight fairly easily on December 22nd 2012, but I know they changed from day to day too.

What are the chances of more seats being released? Do I just keep looking every day? Or is this just one of those times of the year/routes that won't become available.

I am a gold FF holder.

Thank you!

 

[Blackadder]

People are starting to return to work by then, so could be a availibilty issue.
If all else fails consider a flight to LAX and the back from there.

BTW: Welcome to AFF

 

[Bellaballerina]

Thanks Blackadder
I did look up flights from Honolulu to L.A and back, and apparently there is nothing available between Late December and January 23rd (or something like that)

I guess I will keep looking!!

Any other suggestions would be much appreciated!

 

[awilcockson]

Well that's weird, there's flights for sale in January, but no Any Seat Awards (which was going to be my suggestion).

Very weird, have you given Qantas a call?

 

[JohnPhelan]

Recent history is that there are very few classic award seats made available between Australia and HNL in the December/January period. QF can pretty much sell all the seats at commercial rates for this period. I suspect those classic award seats that are available get snapped up on the day that they are released.

Not sure how many seats you are looking for; that may be an issue too. Best chance will be one seat, maybe two.

So best advice would be to work out the day (and hour!) that flights for your chosen date will come onto the system, and try to grab them then.

If you can't get any then, Yield Management may release some seats closer to the date - I've had this exact situation with a SYD-HNL flight, where all the award seats were taken for the date I wanted, but a few weeks out from the travel date, another classic award seat miraculously appeared, out of the blue! It does happen on this route - but I wouldn't make any plans based on it.

Failing that, there's always cheapish fares on Jetstar to SYD, or the new Air Australia to MEL or BNE.

 

[Bellaballerina]

Thank you John. I did suspect that!

Would you know when they would become available? I think I can get up until the 10th at the moment. So I am gathering that I would need to log on at Midnight on the 26th of January to get them?

If worse comes to worse then we will book flights back with jetstar etc. Seems a shame to waste the points though!