The reward flight availability game has changed drastically in just the last 5-10 years. It wasn’t that long ago that the trick to finding Business and First Class award availability was to book as far in advance as possible. So far ahead, in fact, that a common strategy was to book at the exact minute the seats were released.
Until recently, this worked. Many airlines, including Qantas, would predictably release premium cabin reward seats on most flights when they initially went on sale.
Nowadays, airlines are releasing a much higher proportion of reward seats much closer to departure. They’ve changed the rules. To keep up, you also need to change your mindset and adopt a new approach to booking reward flights.
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Qantas’ new approach to releasing reward seats
Pre-COVID, Qantas would typically release Classic Reward seats on most of its flights at 10am Brisbane time, 353 days before departure. At this time, all Qantas Frequent Flyer members would gain access to Economy reward seats, as well as Business Class seats on domestic and short-haul international flights.
Qantas would also release long-haul Premium Economy, Business and First Class reward seats at this time to Gold, Platinum and Platinum One frequent flyers. Silver members would then get access to the remaining seats on these highly sought-after routes with 323 days to departure, and Bronze frequent flyers 297 days out.
Qantas still doesn’t release premium long-haul reward seats to Bronze or Silver frequent flyers until at least 323 or 297 days before departure, respectively. But this is now largely a moot point, as Qantas is no longer releasing any premium cabin Classic Reward seats on most long-haul routes until much closer to departure.
Instead, Qantas now typically releases international Premium Economy, Business and First Class reward seats in batches, up to a few months prior to departure.
In the meantime, most of the seats that appear to be available on the Qantas website are Classic Plus seats – since regular Classic Reward seats haven’t yet been released. Classic Plus seats aren’t really reward seats, but rather a way to convert your points into cash towards a commercial airfare.
Other airlines are also releasing award inventory much later
These days, many other airlines are also releasing reward seats only a few months, weeks or even days out from departure. Here are just a few examples of Qantas partner airlines that do this:
- Emirates often releases extra Business and First Class reward seats within a week or even just a few days of departure
- American Airlines often releases Business and First Class seats on its Sydney-Los Angeles flight within a month of departure
- Cathay Pacific sporadically releases more seats closer to departure
- Qatar Airways only ever makes Business and First Class seats available to Qantas frequent flyers up to 3 days before departure
The following Velocity Frequent Flyer partners also tend to release a lot more seats close to departure:
- All Nippon Airways (ANA)
- United Airlines
- Etihad (Business/First seats released only within a month of departure)
- Hawaiian Airlines
This concept is not entirely new. Some Velocity members may remember that, when Virgin Australia used to fly to Los Angeles, it typically only released Business Class reward seats within a week of departure. You would rarely find seats booking further in advance… but around six days out, Virgin would fairly predictably start to release reward seats.
This practice is now more widespread, and unfortunately, less predictable.
A spot check of premium cabin availability
At the time of writing this article, we checked for award availability on a range of routes that are available to book using Qantas and Velocity points.
As an example, we found 12 Emirates flights from Brisbane to Dubai with First Class reward seats available to book using Qantas Points. Of those flights, 11 have departure dates within the next month. The only other flight with First availability departs in three months.
Of the seven Qantas flights with Business Classic Reward seats currently available from Melbourne to Los Angeles, one was for travel in two weeks, while the other six were all for departures in April (next month).
On the Melbourne-San Francisco route, United Airlines had seven flights with Business Class seats that were available to book using Velocity points. Some of those flights had as many as nine reward seats available to book in Business! But every single one of those flights was departing within two weeks of the date that we searched. (One flight was even departing the following day.)
Of the seven dates across the next year with All Nippon Airways Business seats available through Velocity from Sydney to Tokyo, five dates were within the next week. One was for travel in three weeks, and the other was a random date in July.
Meanwhile, disappointingly, there was not a single Velocity reward seat available on Air Canada from Australia to Canada on any date in the next year – even in Economy. In the other direction, we did find three dates with Air Canada Business availability from Vancouver to Brisbane. All were for travel dates within the next month.
These findings are fairly typical nowadays on these routes and partner airlines.
What’s possible when you book within a week from departure
A recent AFF trip report by PrezRegan is a good example of what you can book with points when you’re completely flexible and book at the latest possible moment. By booking the flights just a few days before departure, this AFF member managed to redeem a mixture of Qantas and Velocity points for a trip that included the following flights:
- Qatar Airways First Class from Sydney to Abu Dhabi (via Doha)
- Etihad Airways First Class from Abu Dhabi to London
- Japan Airlines First Class from Paris to Tokyo
- ANA Business Class from Tokyo to Sydney
Why Qantas changed how it releases reward inventory
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines had a fairly good idea of which flights would and wouldn’t sell well as they could simply look at the historical data from the past years. But demand profiles have completely changed since the pandemic, and airlines can no longer predict with the same level of certainty how popular a particular flight will be – and in which cabins – a year in advance.
In general, airlines don’t want to “give away” seats to frequent flyers booking with points if they could have sold those same seats to full fare-paying customers. There’s a huge opportunity cost in doing so. But if a seat would otherwise fly empty, the marginal cost to the airline of releasing it as a reward seat is relatively low. This is a fundamental part of the frequent flyer program business model.
With this in mind, Australian Frequent Flyer understands that Qantas now releases a lot more Classic Reward availability – especially on premium long-haul routes – within three months of departure. As many AFF members have noticed, Qantas’ revenue management team now tends to release seats in batches, based on the demand profiles of each route.
It’s a similar story with many other airlines. Put simply, they would rather wait until they can be fairly sure they won’t sell a seat to a fare-paying customer before releasing it as award inventory. If they could, I bet many airlines would be quite happy to offer frequent flyer redemption seats on a standby/space available basis – similar to how airline staff travel works.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t really suit a lot of frequent flyers. Many people like to plan their overseas holidays many months in advance. When these people log into the Qantas website and search for Classic Reward seats, they’ll often be disappointed to find that there are none available.
The savvy frequent flyers will still find a way to make the program work for them. But many will just give up and book a Classic Plus reward. They’ll also quite likely feel discouraged from bothering to continue earning Qantas points towards their next holiday. So, this strategy is risky for programs like Qantas Frequent Flyer in the long run.
More airlines are reserving seats for their own members
It’s not new that airlines would make more reward seats available to their own frequent flyers, compared to members of partner airline programs. Airlines like Qantas and Singapore Airlines have already been doing this for a long time. But this too is now a lot more prevalent.
Cathay Pacific, British Airways, Finnair, Etihad and Turkish Airlines are just a few more examples of airlines that now do this.
Of course, this is great if you’re a member of these airlines’ programs and have points that you can redeem with these airlines. By “protecting” the most sought-after reward seats for members of the airline’s own program, this greatly reduces the pool of people who are able to book them. Obviously, that’s not so great if you’ve earned your points with one of those partner airlines…
In some ways, it’s understandable that airlines would want to reserve most of their reward seats for their own loyal members. Otherwise, you could have a situation where almost all of the reward seats on certain routes are being booked out by members of other airline programs.
That’s not really fair when, for example, Australians and Americans are booking out all the best reward seats on airlines whose own members don’t have access to the same opportunities to easily earn lots of points through credit cards.
The new strategies you need to secure reward seats in 2025
Booking Classic Reward seats up to a year in advance can still be a workable strategy in some cases. For example, some Qantas partner airlines such as Japan Airlines, Finnair, China Airlines and Fiji Airways do still often release seats up to a year in advance.
But this only works when booking on selected routes and partner airlines. These are the new strategies you need for the best chance of finding award availability in 2025…
Book as late as possible
Instead of booking up to a year in advance, you’ll now often find the best availability by travelling off-peak and booking at short notice. This can make booking merely weeks or even days before you fly.
Obviously, leaving it very late to book flights can be risky if you need to travel on specific dates. There’s always a chance that airlines won’t actually release seats at the last minute, and then you’re stuck without flights – or needing to buy expensive last-minute cash tickets.
Since airlines are unlikely to release last-minute seats on flights that are already close to full, this probably isn’t a good plan if you need to travel during peak periods like Christmas, school holidays or major events. But it can work.
Book a backup flight
To minimise your risk, you could consider booking a refundable Economy ticket on a “backup” flight that you can cancel up to the day of departure with minimal or no penalty. If a better reward seat opens up at the last minute, you can simply cancel that. If not, at least you have a confirmed flight that will get you where you need to go – even if it’s not in the cabin you really wanted.
You can cancel Qantas Classic Reward tickets up until the first flight on your ticket departs, for a penalty of just 6,000 Qantas Points, and get the remaining points and taxes refunded. (If cancelling within 24 hours of departure, you can’t do this online and would need to call Qantas.)
With Velocity, international Reward Seats have a cancellation fee of 7,500 Velocity Points or $60. You just need to cancel at least 24 hours before the first flight on your ticket.
If booking Economy reward seats as backup flights, consider booking two one-way tickets instead of a round-trip ticket. That way, you can change or cancel the flights in one direction without it affecting the other one. It also means that you can still get a refund for the inbound flights if you end up using the outbound flights on your “backup” ticket.
Keep an eye out for batch releases
With airlines including Qantas now tending to release lots of seats on the same route in one go, it’s worth keeping an eye out for mass seat releases. Once these occur, the seats often sell out quickly.
A few ways to be notified when this happens include:
- Setting award seat alerts with tools such as Seats.aero or ExpertFlyer
- Keeping an eye on the AFF forum
- Subscribing to Point Hacks reward seat alert emails
Leverage your frequent flyer status
If you have Qantas Platinum or Platinum One status, you can use this to your advantage to request the release of additional Classic Flight Reward seats. See our guide to Qantas Platinum seat releases for full details.
Accrue flexible point currencies
If you exclusively collect points with one frequent flyer program, your reward flight options are limited to the seats made available to members of that specific program.
On the other hand, if you collect points with a credit card rewards program such as Amex Membership Rewards, you can enjoy the flexibility to transfer your points to whichever program has the best award availability or pricing for each trip you want to book!
Great Cards for Amex Membership Rewards Points
- Card Name
- American Express Explorer Credit Card
- Earn
- 2
- Signup Bonus
-
100,000 bonus Membership Rewards Points
- Annual Fee
- $395 p.a.
- Read more
- View Offer
on everyday purchases
- Card Name
- American Express Essential Rewards Credit Card
- Earn
- 1
- Signup Bonus
-
60,000 Membership Rewards Bonus Points
Apply by 6th May 2025
- Annual Fee
- $9 per month
- Read more
- View Offer
on everyday purchases
- Card Name
- American Express Platinum Card
- Earn
- 2.25
- Signup Bonus
-
200,000 bonus Membership Rewards points
Apply by 11th Mar 2025
- Annual Fee
- $1,450 p.a.
- Read more
- View Offer
on everyday purchases
For more tips, listen to episode 7 of our Travel Pointers podcast! This episode was released today and includes an in-depth discussion of the latest reward flight trends, as well as where and how to find award availability.
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