Questions and Answers

Dear Lucky,
First, congratulations on the excellent articles you post. I find them most useful.
Second: I have been planning a trip for me and my wife using first or business class saver awards. I have the ORD-HKG-BKK seats on business saver on hold leaving in the middle of January 2017 (Cathey Pacific), but absolutely NOTHING available from BNA-ORD or ORD-BNA in 2017. No saver economy no saver first. Then I looked around, and it seems that there is a (AA) systemwide block on these award seats for 2017, because whatever combination I look at, absolutely nothing is available. I asked the AA agents, they think it is because of the upcoming devaluation. What do you think? Thanking you.

I think Gary over at VFTW has a post on this exact thing. Not much you can do. You could call and ask if they will open up space using the QMAX system (Google for details) but it might take a few agents before they know what you are talking about and agree to check. If you have the long legs in hand it also might be worth it to pay for a positioning flight.

Dear Gaurav, Thank you for your reply. I was afraid of that (that really there is nothing I can do). It was just most unusual to see that nothing whatsoever is available in the whole US for January, while before that (last 2 weeks of December), every day is wide open until December 31st. Oh well, at least I still have the ORD-HKG-BKK. Now I just need to pray that on the way back they will have something available. Thanks again.