Has additional CW 241 availability been reduced?

[Dom]

For the last few years we have redeemed our 241 each year to Tokyo, with the additional availability from the 241, the fact we aren’t tied to school holidays and didn’t travel at peak times (sakura season etc) I never had too much of an issue finding seats, typically 6-9 months in advance. Often there wasn’t any availability from LHR but searching from MAN or EDI would turn up a decent amount.

I was just speculatively searching now and it seems to have changed drastically, with a 241 I can see a handful of dates each way in December 24 from LHR (which looking at seatspy don’t seem to be standard availability) but that is it for the entire year ahead, switching to search from MAN is actually worse with some of those dates in December disappearing (guess due to fairly short notice now on the feeder flight) and no additional dates appearing at all.

There is plenty of I class availability for cash fares through the year but obviously whilst that is required for the extra 241 availability it isn’t sufficient.

I was just curious if anyone else out there regularly searches a particular route and is seeing the same? I did see one comment on a Flyertalk thread from someone saying they thought availability was worse than 6-9 months ago. I guess this could purely be the popularity of Tokyo as I don’t have any other routes to compare it to but I’m also wondering whether a change has been made to searching with a regional connection as that used to unlock a lot of extra availability but no longer seems to for me.

[JDB]

@Dom – you only see additional availability from domestic cities (ie greater than that to/from London) if BA is doing promotional cash fare activity. The fact it also gives/gave greater 241 availability was a by product and possibly not an intentional one. BA uses cheaper fares from the regions to compete with other carriers so only does this when it needs or wants to and you need a fair number of these extra seats to become available to give extra voucher space as one can observe via ExpertFlyer. Also, with cash fares BA can flex which fare bucket it books in the donestic sector, something not fully allowed for on 241 bookings.

[Dom]

Thanks @JDB , that does make sense. I understood that the extra 241 availability from the regions was due to higher I class availability from the regions vs from London but I hadn’t appreciated it being linked to time limited promotional activity and had assumed this was just normal due to the other 1 stop options available from the regions beside BA. This does make sense though as checking cash prices now a MAN-LHR-HND return CW itinerary is indeed priced higher than the LHR-HND for the same date (booking into I class).

I must have just by luck been searching when promotional activity was going on (I booked this itinerary 3 times over the last couple of years) or maybe promotions on this route were more common in the last couple of years than they are now.

[dst87]

I managed to fairly easily get 2-4-1 availability to Tokyo this year without much drama – booked once and then moved the booking to different dates earlier this year (travelling next month). I also noticed that there’s effectively no availability at all booking from Edinburgh for the next year. I think we got exceptionally lucky with when we just happened to decide we wanted to visit Japan!

[PeteM]

I also think, particularly on the HND route, demand is higher this year than last year – the exchange rate, for one, just keeps getting more favourable. Throw in the EXPO (which is why we’re going next Sep) and overall growing appeal of Japan it’s a bit of a perfect storm!

[TGLoyalty]

There’s also the impact of more of the 2-4-1 card holders now only having the new vouchers while when they were introduced there were many older vouchers in circulation and being used

There’s the general reduction in flight availability too with the RR engine issues and lack of Boeing deliveries.