Some airlines make awards available when they load their schedules, which varies between roughly ten to twelve months prior to flight. They might add seats right when schedules load, or they might wait a few days or weeks.
Other airlines will wait until travel approaches. Although in general I find the best time to be searching for award space is about 6 months to departure. And one of the toughest times is two months out — seats made available in advance may be gone, and last minute award space hasn’t opened up yet.
What Airlines Want to Accomplish With Saver Awards
What airlines want to do is make sure that ‘saver’ award seats do not displace paying passengers.
When an airline seat takes off empty, the airline can never sell that seat again. So they’re willing to take almost anything for it. They can deeply discount the fare hoping to sell it. They can make the seat available on points through its frequent flyer program.
The mileage program is usually an airline’s single biggest customer, so it is a volume discount buyer, and saver awards are spoiling inventory that can be sold cheap. And they can unload these seats to customers wanting to spend their points and not cash, so it’s a mechanism that allows price discimination — discounting to some customers while continuing to charge a high price premium to others.
Booking Last Minute Can Be a Great Strategy for International Trips
I do find that traveling internationally if I want until a week out from travel I can usually improve whatever award I have booked. I’m a big fan of booking a ‘worst case’ ticket, locking in travel, and then being willing to pay a change fee (many international programs have very modest fees) to improve my itinerary.
Domestically there aren’t that many open seats on most routes, so it’s hardly as effective a strategy to wait until close to departure to book an award.
But Why Don’t Empty Flights Have Saver Awards?
There are plenty of flights though with empty seats. And not all airlines make those seats available for saver redemption. I frequently see mostly empty Singapore Airlines first class cabins, with not a single saver seat available on the day of departure. American and United fly all over the world with business class seats that aren’t being sold at business class fares, yet saver space doesn’t open up.
And that presents a conundrum: if airlines are trying to unload seats that would otherwise go empty through their frequent flyer program, why aren’t they unloading seats that would otherwise go empty through their frequent flyer program — by making saver award seats available on flights with plenty of open seats close to departure?
Reader Mike asks,
Why does American (and other airlines) not open up business class seats in the days before a flight when so many seats are still empty.
I was looking … three days in the future, and there were over 100 empty seats on flights from various cities to [London Heathrow]. Two of the flights had more than 25 empty seats available.
Why not use up their miles inventory and help out members. I can’t figure out how this makes sense. Members are holding billions of miles they can’t use, and that can’t be good. Why not let people use them on seats that will surely go empty?Thanks
Airlines want to make sure that they have seats available for last minute purchase, and there are certainly business travelers buying close to departure. So just because a flight has plenty of seats doesn’t mean it’s going to take off with empty seats (even leaving aside employees that want to travel).
Since airlines are often charging a premium for last minute travel, they also want to make sure that customers don’t decide to use their miles instead of buying a revenue fare.
If you know you can get an award seat, you might redeem miles instead of paying cash, and that’s a financial loss to the airline. Saver awards are all about getting something for the seat while avoiding loss of revenue.
Why That’s Not Good Enough
Frequent flyer miles are profit centers for US airlines. They sell miles, mostly to banks, and earn billions of dollars. For customers to want to keep earning, though, they have to have a good experience with redemption.
That means being able to use points to go where they want to travel, when they want to travel, and in the class of service they want as well.
Since miles are largely geared towards being used by leisure travelers, some flexibility may be necessary in order to accomplish the trip. And getting the most peak of peak destinations and flights may not be possible — Hawaii or Australia for Christmas and New Year’s — but for the program to work for the airlines it has to satisfy members.
Airlines that do not open saver award space almost ever on flights that are going out with plenty of available seats ultimately undercut confidence in the program.
My experience has been that United generally will open up space close in if there are lots of unsold seats. Even if they didn’t open the space in advance, they allow you to wait list for a saver award in business (on United operated flights) as long as you can confirm a saver award in coach on the same flight. So in the hypothetical where there’s tons of open space but it’s not released to saver inventory for some reason, you could wait list and be pretty confident it would clear.
Hence I haven’t seen this as a problem on United, though I understand many have complained about it on AA.
Generally correct, but I think you reversed the order of importance. You nail it that revenue matters more, then say that’s not how airlines should value their sears. Those empty seats are a long-term cost, but provide the value prop of the airline. I’ll give you a hotel example.
I used to work front desk at a luxury hotel in a major city. At night people used to come in and ask for huge (70-90%) discounts for rooms the nights we weren’t sold out; the answer was always no. Because once those rooms can be had for $20 for just showing up “day of”, then it becomes difficult/impossible to sell them for $400 as a standard price. If you think that “couldn’t happen” all you need to do is look at the feeding frenzy around error fares online.
As you noted, revenue is king in most cases. So it’s not just about keeping the awards program pricing up, it’s about keeping revenue prices supported as well. If confidence in the awards program is undercut (which it may be, but I’d bet that’s really low on the “customer satisfaction” surveys their actual customers return to them), it’s a lower cost to the airline than losing out on those cash sales.
“Undercut confidence in the program”. Well said. Too bad the airlines don’t see it that way.
A superb topic that you addressed quite well. Thanks.
Lufthansa seems to think about it differently regarding 1st class.
maybe because they’re using that as a subliminal marketing ploy to get more money out of customers? Who knows!?
Leaving aside the situation where you’re on the plane and see empty seats, is it possible that when you are looking at available seats on a seat map day of or a couple days prior that they are not all actually available as some paying customers in coach may have some sort of upgrade rights (say 500-mile stickers at AA for example)? And so if that is the case, the airline might prefer to upgrade the otherwise paying passenger if it goes unsold rather than offload that seat to an award fare. This would leave that biz seat available to the last-minute high fare customer as well giving the airline some optionality that it wouldn’t have if it offers the saver award.
One way to look at it, who’s paying those high prices? Business customers and family emergencies most likely. A business customer isn’t going to use their miles for those seats if the company is going to pay for the ticket. Therefore releasing the seat to points isn’t hurting as long as that business person can still buy a tickets. The family emergency example, the amount of goodwill created should outweigh the price of the fare. Finally isn’t it better to collect miles on your own metal than have a member use those points on another airline in the alliance, which might be opening up that space?
I don’t think I’ll ever really understand airline thinking with either award travel or upgrades. I once got upgraded on an Asian carrier’s flight to business class and I’m not an elite with them (though have elite status through their alliance) though it was a short flight but the cabin had many empty seats in it.
And then in January I got upgraded to a higher cabin off an award ticket on a US carrier which strikes me as nuts. Give the upgrade to a paying customer not an award ticket. I flew that flight precisely because I didn’t want to give them money. I shouldn’t be rewarded for that.
Fare-paying front-cabin passengers drive airlines’ profitability. Last-minute front-cabin passengers potentially buy the most profitable tickets of all. I imagine airlines conclude that it’s worth letting considerable F and J inventory fly empty, rather than take the chance that a passenger willing to buy a last-minute premium ticket will redeem miles instead.
UA is more consumer-friendly in this regard of releasing “saver” type award space very close-in for domestic flights which are otherwise going out with (more) empty seats (at least in the main cabin). AA is awful in this regard.
AA’s mileage program is bAAd when it comes to award space and award travel pricing.
@Redacted, grichard, et al – front of cabin isn’t the only place where the money is, especially on flights that are below most companies’ thresholds for paid J. A last minute Y ticket (especially flexible true Y) can command quite a pretty penny with corporate travel departments, which is why you will in fact see people rolled forward into J to sell more Y, especially on the shorter or domestic flights that you reference.
@CW
I don’t dispute what you say, I just disagree that it should have applied to me with the award ticket. Was there no one else on the plane who actually paid money who could have taken that seat? This was to a leisure destination so corporate travel shouldn’t have been that much of a consideration and it wasn’t a short flight. Another thing I didn’t mention in my original post, there was at least 1 empty seat in the cabin I got upgraded to…and this is usually a flight where all the seats are taken up either by paying customers, automatic upgrades, or at the gate upgrades. The flight itself was far from full, which is a bit unusual on this leg, so maybe that was a factor in why they upgraded me (scraping the bottom of the barrel type deal). Still I can’t believe there wasn’t a paying customer onboard who wouldn’t have taken that seat if offered to them. Unless you’re like top level elite with a history of big spend with the carrier, an award ticket should always get upgraded after you’ve exhausted all paying customer alternatives. IMO, of course.
Along the lines of Vet&Banker’s hotel front desk experience: As a business traveler, if I know that an award seat in first or business will open up a few days before I need to travel, there’s no way I’m buying that ticket with cash in advance. The airline can’t afford to not sell the seat at a premium and then give it away for miles, they’d never sell any premium tickets. As Platinum on DL (and Gold on both AA and UA) I buy upgrade eligible coach tickets and hope for the upgrade. Favorite is when I find a super discounted mileage ticket and still get the complimentary upgrade to First. it doesn’t happen very often – but it’s a real treat when it does!!!
For what it is worth, anecdotally I see UA opening the floodgates on X saver awards regularly on the flights I am looking for (typically domestic) at the last minute (T-24) when seats are available. I don’t see AS or AA doing the same, but I am an SFO hub captive so UA is often the go-to. As long as business customers are using expense accounts for travel (true except for small businesses), and points are primarily for leisure use, this is a great way for the airline to get something for nothing. Hope RM and loyalty departments at all airlines take note.
I regularly (1-2 times a year) book Qantas frequent flyer tickets 2 weeks ,or less, before I fly.
As long as you are reasonably flexible about day or time of day it works well.