Reply To: Availability for partner award ticket when connecting

[JDB]

Rob Burgess wrote:

Whilst the above reasoning is correct, it should actually work the other way round.

The idea is that Finnair makes reward seats available from London to benefit its UK members (so you CAN book LON-HEL-BKK) but does NOT allow you to book just HEL-BKK. This allows reward seats to be ringfenced if the airline wants to make the programme more attractive in certain regions.

Another reason is to hold back award seats on certain flights for people who need to connect – eg locals can be pushed towards the first flight of the day whilst letting connecting passengers go later.

Iberia used to do the same and may still do so – you could book, say, Seville – Madrid – New York but not Madrid – New York.

Can confirm Iberia still doing this, as last weekend my son was trying to book last minute flights with Iberia to Buenos Aires and spotted that while there was nothing from Madrid, there was from most smaller Spanish cities, Nice or Toulouse, but not from directly MAD or BCN. He ended up booking VGO-MAD-EZE as Vigo was the easiest to get to from London.