As we all know, at times it can be challenging to find award availability, especially for travel in first and business class. Many people assume that airlines will always open some award seats as soon as the schedule first opens, but that’s not the case at most airlines.
However, there are a few(ish) airlines that have award seat guarantees, whereby they promise that a certain number of award seats will be made available as soon as the schedule opens. In this post, I’d like to go over the airlines offering that, and talk about what the guarantee entails.
The airlines that guarantee award seats
Currently there are two or three frequent flyer programs that guarantee a certain number of award seats as soon as the schedule opens. These include British Airways Club, Finnair Plus, and Iberia Club (sort of). Let’s take a look at the details of each of these.
With British Airways’ award seat guarantee, the airline promises 12 to 14 award seats per flight:
- On short haul flights, you can expect at least eight economy (Euro Traveller) award seats and four business class (Club Europe) award seats
- On long haul flights, you can expect at least eight economy (World Traveller) award seats, two premium economy (World Traveller Plus) award seats, and four business class (Club World) award seats; there are no guarantees for first class awards
With Finnair’s award seat guarantee, the airline promises six to eight award seats per flight:
- On short haul flights, you can expect at least four economy award seats and two business class award seats
- On long haul flights, you can expect at least four economy award seats, two premium economy award seats, and two business class award seats
That brings us to Iberia’s award seat guarantee. Officially, the airline simply claims that it “guarantees a minimum number of seats that can be exchanged for Avios on all Iberia Group flights,” without clarifying what that number is. That being said, I find that more often than not, Iberia follows the same model as British Airways and Finnair:
- On short haul flights, you can expect at least four economy award seats and two business class award seats
- On long haul flights, you can expect at least four economy award seats, two premium economy award seats, and two business class award seats
Let me emphasize that those numbers are not published, but just matches my observations, combined with the airline promising that it does have a guarantee.
There are a few things to note about these opportunities:
- The guaranteed award availability is loaded as soon as the schedule opens, which is 355 days out with British Airways Club, 361 days out with Finnair Plus, and 360 days out with Iberia Club
- For whatever reason, you need to select “Finland” as the country on Finnair’s website in order to unlock the full seats available through the guarantee
- The award seat guarantee is a minimum, so in many cases you’ll find that more award seats are actually available
- These guarantees only apply through the “native” frequent flyer program, so often won’t be bookable through partner frequent flyer programs
- In the case of Finnair Plus, the award seat guarantee only applies to flights that are to and from Helsinki (HEL), and doesn’t include the Doha (DOH) route
- In some cases these awards have high carrier imposed surcharges, especially with British Airways
I should also mention that even for airlines without award seat guarantees, typically the best time to redeem miles is either as soon as the schedule opens, or close to departure, when airlines make a lot of unsold seats available with miles.
Lastly, to be thorough, let me clarify that Virgin Atlantic Flying Club used to offer an award seat guarantee, but no longer does, since switching to dynamic award pricing.
Other airlines have different types of guarantees
The above are the two frequent flyer programs that I’d consider to offer the most useful guarantees when it comes to award availability. However, there are some other points that should be highlighted.
For one, there are lots of frequent flyer programs that are revenue based, where you can redeem points for any seat on any flight. This includes programs like JetBlue TrueBlue and Southwest Rapid Rewards. Obviously these airlines also have an award seat guarantee (in the sense that there will always be space), but it won’t necessarily be a good deal, so I don’t think it’s worth highlighting in the same way.
For that matter, even airlines with loyalty programs that aren’t revenue based largely have award seat guarantees nowadays, whereby you can redeem points for any seat on a plane. This includes programs like American AAdvantage and Delta SkyMiles. However, this isn’t typically a good value, since in many cases an award will cost many hundreds of thousands of points.
Bottom line
Award availability can be tough to come by nowadays, especially for premium cabin travel. That’s why I think it’s worth highlighting the few programs that have an award seat guarantee, whereby a certain number of award seats are made available as soon as the schedule opens.
This can be worth understanding for situations where you want to lock in an award in advance on a particular flight, since that’s not an assurance you can have with most other programs. I wish we’d see more airlines offer an award seat guarantee.
Have you ever benefited from an airline award seat guarantee?