Reward availibility

Is there anyway online of findign out how many reward seats are availible on a given flight?

I was hoping that they would come up as a specific fare.

Thanks

[Bazz]

For "G" fares there are frequently as few as two per flight, unless revenue management chooses to release more, not sure about numbers in the other cabins though.

AFAIK, the only way to find out how many reward seats are available is to ring VS since you can't view G/U/T online. If you just want to find out if there's an available seat, have a look at this thread

Cheers

Michael

[RichardMannion]

Originally posted by mcuth
AFAIK, the only way to find out how many reward seats are available is to ring VS since you can't view G/U/T online. If you just want to find out if there's an available seat, have a look at this thread

Cheers

Michael

Not quite true mcuth, if you log into your FC account online, down on the right hand pane will be a button for Flights with Miles. That will allow you to search for reward availability too.

Thanks,
Richard

Originally posted by RichardMannion
Not quite true mcuth, if you log into your FC account online, down on the right hand pane will be a button for Flights with Miles. That will allow you to search for reward availability too.

LRoM - that's why I pointed manymiles to this thread where that's discussed at length Manymiles wanted to know how many seats are available - rather than go through the above for different numbers of people travelling, it's probably easier to just ring FC

Cheers

Michael

[RichardMannion]

Sorry mcuth!

That will teach me for not opening the posted threads!

Thanks,
Richard

I really like what two other airlines have done for reward availability - and V-Flyers might be interested to see these examples (both of which are with VS partner airlines!):

1) Air New Zealand. They've done away with the whole mileage/reward type idea. You earn miles. Then you can spend them against any revenue fare. A mile will be worth $x (I don't know what the value of x happens to be), you search for a flight, then you redeem the appropriate number of miles for that ticket.

2) Continental. They have two types of awards - Standard and EasyPass (same as many other US airlines). Their web site has a reward calendar function, which lets you see which award type is available on which flights, and also shows all available classes of service. You can mix and match award types and class of service. Great functionality. A fantastic web site!

[RichardMannion]

Hi bostonbrit,

I remember discussing both of those programs a while ago with head of Loyalty as they are interesting schemes. Personally I really like Flying Club, and to be fair the redemtption levels were cut on some routes a while ago where as other airlines have been pushing the cost up.

I do agree that the website could be improved and at last talk there was a large project in the think tank to really redo the whole ticket bookign engine and process. I love BA's FareExplorer utility which shows the days by colour according to fare, and I think it would be great to have a version of this for VS Revenue and Reward bookings. The fact that fare classes are displayed so late on in the boooking process is another pain. I have suggested in my feedback oppurtunities that they consider putting in an advanced user mode, where it will give better granularity and control over bookings. I remember when deckchair.com launched, there was a matrix that allowed you to select the available fare classes by sector and it would detail each fare class and conditions in a pop-up.

Thanks,
Richard