Geeky question about reward availability

I'm now on a flexible economy fare LHR-SFO, but wanting to use miles both ways to get into UC.
Have been checking every day online, but what I'd like to know is

1) When reward seats are released, what time of the day is this? E.g. midnight, 9am, etc.? The reason I ask is that I don't have internet at work, so I'm only getting to check at 6pm-ish. Hence if the seats come free at 9am I'm disadvantaged.

2) When extra reward seats are made available, is this normally a set amount of days/weeks before the flight itself?

Cheers
Andy

If there is spare capacity, then the revenue department release seats about 5-7 days before the flight. I don't think there is a specific time, as the number of days does vary. As you are using miles I assume you are a FC member, so you could always try ringing up about 7 days before. They are very helpful in spending your miles for you . If you are a gold member (I see there is no FC membership avitar on your profile) then they may well ring up revenue before the 7 days if the flight is not very busy, and request a reward seat.

It isn't a geeky question by the way.

Cheers Jeremy, I'm silver, I'll give them a ring before like you said and ask nicely! Thanks

Originally posted by AndyK
I'll give them a ring before like you said and ask nicely!

Sounds like a plan to me [y]

Thanks This answered my question too before i even asked it - same route too

And this release really happens.. I was playing around with seeing what G seats were available for the beginning of next week, and there were G seats on the LGW-LAS route which surprised me.

Think I might have the answer as to what time they're released. Was checking the VS20 for 1st August last night, literally around 1130pm, no availabilit in G. Checked this morning at 330am and the availability was there. So possibly the availability goes automatically at midnight?

Could be Andy. However I have rung up on flights before and there has been no availablity. However FC have put a call into revenue to me, and the seats have been released. Occassionally this has been as much as 10 days before. I am sure having a gold card helped.

I guess there is an official release point which is no doubt determined by systems updates. However it seems there is also an unofficial time afterwhich they will manually release if appropriate.

Originally posted by sailor99
Could be Andy. However I have rung up on flights before and there has been no availablity. However FC have put a call into revenue to me, and the seats have been released. Occassionally this has been as much as 10 days before. I am sure having a gold card helped.

I've done this on many occasions and having a gold card definitely helps. I believe it is one of the benefits of having one that they will often release revenue seats for you close to departure time.

The closer to departure you get, the more likely they are to release the seats, it seems. This makes sense, I suppose, as they are becoming increasingly unlikely to be bought by a fare-paying passenger.

Chris