Last minute (same and next day) extra Avios seats availability – reliable?

[AVN37]

Hi point hunters,
apologies if this is something commonly known in the community, but do we know if BA release additional seats to Avios redemptions when the flight date’s coming up and they still haven’t sold them?
Asking because I’ve been monitoring certain dates for Economy award flights to Prague, and while Fridays and weekends are generally completely booked out weeks ahead, suddenly when we reached Thursday, there were a bunch of seats open for Friday and Saturday. I’ve seen this happen several times before already.
Does anyone know more about this, whether anecdotally or in terms of actual BA policy? I’m looking to fly in March on days that are already showing as booked out now but if there’s a decent chance seats will free up the day before I might be comfortable with taking the risk of making alternative arrangements for cash.
Thanks in advance!

[FatherOfFour]

If BA think they can sell the seats “last-minute” they may not offer them for Avios, but yes, it seems to be quite common for BA to open up additional availability where they have unsold seats.

[SamG]

short haul is quite reliable from what I’ve observed, though sometimes only CE . Long haul seems less consistent

[Thegasman]

If it was very reliable then no one would pay top whack for a last minute flexible fare! If you’re looking at destinations with multiple flights/day & you have flexibility on departure time or date +/- a day or 2 then you’ll probably find something. If you don’t luck out though then can you stomach £600 or cancel the trip?

[Londonsteve]

I used to often book flights at the last minute with Avios for years, even if I had no choice but to fly on the day in question. I accepted the risk that I might have to book a last minute flight with Ryanair if no reward seats came up, but they always did. I was commuting weekly to a job in London from my place overseas. Invariably I was booking reward seats during busier times of year when I wasn’t able to get a well priced fare with a low cost carrier 6-8 weeks in advance so on certain dates I’d bide my time and end up flying with a reward seat booked the day before.

You do need SOME flexibility on the day in question in my experience, i.e. you can’t be fixated on getting the first or last flight of the day and this trick tends to only work on routes with at least 2 flights a day, otherwise it’s easy to luck out and find there’s nothing uploaded for days on end if the one daily flight is always flying full. You also have to enjoy an element of risk involved and accept that your numbers might not come up and you’re looking at swallowing a £2-400 fare to fly at the last minute with a low cost carrier, but that’s the luck of the draw. It never happened to me over the space of something like 5 years, but I was also not trying to do this on guaranteed sell out dates, like the Friday and Saturday before Christmas. For those it was invariably best to book 6 months in advance and accept it won’t be a cheap ticket. BA won’t upload any extra Avios availability if they know they can sell every seat but that tends to only happen on super busy dates.

[Londonsteve]

Even on some flights that you’d assume would be a guaranteed sell out, like immediately before or after a major sporting fixture, or the the last day of the school holidays, you’d often see 1 or 2 seats pop up the day before. I guess the pricing algos are trying to ensure the flight nearly fills up but not completely, otherwise it would suggest they’ve undercharged for the seats. There might also be some internal reasons why they keep back a couple of seats on each flight until the last minute to ensure availability for Gold card or important corporate clients? If these are unclaimed with 24-48 hours to go, they go back in the general pool and can be bought by anyone.

In my experience fresh availability is uploaded each day at 00:01 GMT and you’re best served checking shortly after midnight to see what’s available for the next calendar day. If you don’t and it’s a busy time to fly, you could find that by 8am someone else has snapped up the few seats BA were going to make available and there won’t be any more forthcoming, so don’t leave checking until the morning. Equally, be aware of the shifting clock and there’s no guarantee that availability over the initial 4 economy and 2 business seats goes up at precisely 00:01, technically they can go up at any time. If you find nothing shortly after midnight or 0100 for the day after, check again right after you get up. You can repeat the process on the day in question, but if there’s no availability the calendar day before, in my experience there also won’t be on the day and you might pay 100s more for your last minute flight compared to booking it more than 24 hours in advance so I’d not take that risk. If there’s only CE availability that’s also fine because invariably it’s still way cheaper than a last minute booking on a low cost airline and you get to treat yourself to the perks with a real justification.