Questions and Answers

Lucky wrote in October about decreased Emirates First award space using Alaska miles. Either it never improved, or it’s gone bad again, as I can hardly find any availability ex-US on a range of dates I want 6 months from now. Any updates on what’s going on?

@User Name — Hmmm, six months out is probably the worst time to look at award space in general, but happy to look into it more. Which airports are you looking at?

Any US airport. In a 3-day window, there is only F award space available on a single flight (EK206 ex-JFK). There are multiple seats, and when I expand the search across more dates it’s just that one flight that comes up. This leads me to believe that award space hasn’t been loaded for many/most flights, as it certainly doesn’t look random. In contrast, other flights between DXB and various European cities during the same time window have fairly healthy availability. This is in contrast from the last time I looked to book an AS award on EK, so just wondering when the change happened.

Yeah, my guess is that it has to do with the 6-month timing. I see seats as far out as December, so it’s not that the space hasn’t been loaded, but rather that there may have been less released to begin with, or that it’s since been snatched up.

I’ll keep an eye on it though!