LHR - MBJ reward seats

We usually fly to Jamaica from Manchester via ATL or JFK, but are considering saving a little on the connecting flights for next year by going direct from LHR.

However, I've tried dummy bookings for a vast range of dates and there is no reward availability showing on any of them, in any cabin. Can someone in the know let me know if this is normal for this route or just a peculiarity of the current situation? Cheers

I’m having the same issue for MAN-MCO. Very few direct reward seats available (at least in UC).

Was speaking to an agent last week who said he had never seen so few available but, of course, couldn’t comment on the reason why. Not sure if they are being taken by people rescheduling cancelled flights or if they’re just not being released for revenue purposes.

I think it's the current situation.

When VS had their sale back in November, I was able to upgrade my PE reward seats to UC and there was loads of availability.

I used Seat Spy to check and there seriously was loads of availability throughout the year. I've just checked again now and there aren't anywhere near as many, but there is still a bit of availability.

Have you given them a try?

Cheers folks, I haven't used seat spy but will give it a go. We rebooked our 2020 reward seats out to ATL back from MCO back in October and although there was a delay in releasing the reward seats that I hadn't experienced before, once they released them there was loads of availability.

Maybe this is an attempt to maximise revenues but these things tend to backfire! It will be interesting to see what they do now that Aer Lingus have announced the new transatlantic routes including MCO!

Seatspy shows very little after Sept

I spoke to an agent last week about a change and she told me that they are drastically reducing rewards seats at the moment to try and recoup lost revenue

Hmm it’s a sweet spot for the airline, the points you earn generate income in other ways and are very profitable in their own rights, or else these loyalty schemes wouldn’t exist. I always tell myself that I get more out of Hilton Honors and Flying Club than I put in but in reality I do spend a lot of my disposable income with both (and some of my work budget for the former!)

The reality is that revenue management will tweak allocations to generate the best results and as there is potentially about to be a flood of pent up travel demand released I would expect they would want to channel people to Rev fares, but once that normalises I would expect things to get back to normal!

Saying this, I am not seeing this problem for any of the routes I would regularly fly where multiple dates throughout the year I am seeing plenty of availability in all cabins! Seeing multiple Gs on both daily LAXs was as rare as rocking horse poop in years gone by!

There’s speculation, that VS might switch a 35K onto the MCO route this summer dependant on demand and if that were to happen I’m almost certain they would open up some G fares with 44 J seats to fill!

Thanks for this

I did the seat spy alerts for all of our options and some availability is being released, but so far only in EC which would not go down too well with my spoilt family!

I'll keep hoping that things are a little back to normal by next year!