Staggered award availability?

[wanderer_au]

I'm looking for an award J seat on CX139 (the daytime HKG-SYD flight) early in the new year. Freshly equipped with both Award Nexus and Expert Flyer, as well as the CX website, I'm gobsmacked to see that the only seats currently booked on the whole plane are some award PE seats that I saw on the QF website a while ago. There are *no* seats in Y currently booked - revenue or award. Surely by now there'd be Y award seat availability now too - but Award Nexus says no.

Does this seem weird to anyone else? Does CX release J (or even Y) seats closer to the time? Or is CX just cracking down on award seats across all classes? Thanks for any advice anyone can give - I'm genuinely surprised.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I'm looking for an award J seat on CX139 (the daytime HKG-SYD flight) early in the new year. Freshly equipped with both Award Nexus and Expert Flyer, as well as the CX website, I'm gobsmacked to see that the only seats currently booked on the whole plane are some award PE seats that I saw on the QF website a while ago. There are *no* seats in Y currently booked - revenue or award. Surely by now there'd be Y award seat availability now too - but Award Nexus says no.

Does this seem weird to anyone else? Does CX release J (or even Y) seats closer to the time? Or is CX just cracking down on award seats across all classes? Thanks for any advice anyone can give - I'm genuinely surprised.

Since their award program changes last year availability has really dried up for point to point. Once you marry segments it seems to open it up a lot more.

CX routinely releases more seats closer in to departure, even day by day in the week just prior to departure.

 

[Mattg]

There are *no* seats in Y currently booked - revenue or award.

How do you know this?

 

[wanderer_au]

How do you know this?

I'm looking at the seat map in Y on expertflyer.com and that's how it looks to me....

UPDATE: 71H and 71K look booked - weird as they look like pretty ordinary seats. Three seats in PE are booked (I'm guessing they're award bookings) and one seat in J that was not booked earlier in the week. Interesting.

 

[Mattg]

I'm looking at the seat map in Y on expertflyer.com and that's how it looks to me....

UPDATE: 71H and 71K look booked - weird as they look like pretty ordinary seats. Three seats in PE are booked (I'm guessing they're award bookings) and one seat in J that was not booked earlier in the week. Interesting.

There is a difference between seats booked and seats allocated

Why Airline Seat Maps Are NOT a Reliable Indicator of Flight Loadings

 

[wanderer_au]

There is a difference between seats booked and seats allocated

Why Airline Seat Maps Are NOT a Reliable Indicator of Flight Loadings

Sure mate - but the fare buckets are all showing 9s right through - and prices they are asking for this one flight are unbelievably high. Suggesting to me that they're not encouraging anyone to get on this plane right now! V curious.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Sure mate - but the fare buckets are all showing 9s right through - and prices they are asking for this one flight are unbelievably high. Suggesting to me that they're not encouraging anyone to get on this plane right now! V curious.

9s across the board could mean as few as 9 seats are available in total in economy class (and each other cabin).

The fare is not necessarily a good indicator as CX may have 'married' the segments. While the fare HKG-SYD might be high, the fare London/Paris/Frankfurt (or anywhere else they fly from in Europe or USA) might be much lower, using the 139 as a connecting service for through traffic.

An example is a flight I had last year CVG-PHL in the USA - just a short 90 minute flight. The cheapest one way fare was AUD700 in economy. No award seats. But connect onward from PHL to Europe and award seats were available and the entire fare CVG-Europe was AUD500 plus change.

And the flight gradually filled up, despite the very high sector fare.

CX is certainly marrying segments with point to point itineraries now. While HKG-SYD may show nothing available, try TPE-SYD, or PVG-SYD (or long haul from europe) and see if that changes availability.

 

[Scr77]

CX is certainly marrying segments with point to point itineraries now. While HKG-SYD may show nothing available, try TPE-SYD, or PVG-SYD (or long haul from europe) and see if that changes availability.

I see what you mean and can get better search results if wanting to search for AU to Asia. But how do you get the Qantas system to search via Hong Kong for where it defaults via Singapore or London etc? ie can’t do a married segment search to Singapore via HK. The multi stop search engine gets treated like point to point and has less results.

 

[wanderer_au]

These shared insights are what make AFF such a great resource. Thanks so much!

UPDATE: Sure enough, I tried with a search for a few days later than my intended date of travel. Searched JFK-SYD with CX, and sure enough, there's CX139 sitting there with J availability. But try HKG-SYD, and they're gone.

Fascinating. Thanks team.