As of 1 October 2013 Aeromexico is changing their award booking buckets to align with (most of) the rest of SkyTeam. Economy awards will book in to X and business class into O. This change has exposed the new business class bucket to one of the data sources I use for the Wandering Aramean Travel Tools which means I can now offer easier searching and alerts for Aeromexico award seats. Here is a sample search result screen:
From what I can see so far the X inventory for coach awards isn’t available via this source so those searches won’t show but I’ll keep an eye on it.
Give it a try and let me know if you run in to any troubles. And remember that this is only for travel after 1 October 2013.
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Thanks Seth! This is incredibly useful!
Note this thread at FT. There is a lot more broken than just X inventory. For example SFO-MEX biz (O) inventory just vanishes after 9/30. Wide open up to 9/30. It shows up as bookable when you search by schedule on .dumb but then errors out when you try to book it. Apparently inventory has been loaded wrong (at least that’s what Delta tech support has indicated) but nobody at .dumb can seem to fix it.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other-north-south-america-frequent-flyer-programs/1466925-no-aeromexico-award-availability-after-sep-30-2013-a.html
I don’t know that X isn’t properly loaded or just that the data source I’m pulling from cannot see it. Either way, I don’t have access right now.
As for O inventory disappearing on 9/30 that doesn’t surprise me all that much. Prior to the change it is a revenue fare, not an award fare. I wouldn’t expect that it would be sold out as a revenue bucket.
If award inventory is going away in the process I would say that is really bad news (even if it is good news in terms of being able to search for scarce space). Biz award space is wide open up to 9/30 and dramatically reduces after 9/30. Not just SFO-MEX but also LAX-MEX and many other routes.
Are you saying that “O” inventory is changing or that award space is changing? The two are different things based on the planned change in the buckets.
And it is entirely possible that, in an effort to avoid screwing up too much, they locked down the seats in the interim. There’s another option which ends up the way SQ’s work did a couple times and that’s not very good for the airlines.
Finally No need to underestimate the ability of airlines to screw things up pretty significantly rather than making significant policy changes. They’ve proven often enough that they do, from time to time, just mess up.
I’m not sure “O” has any meaning prior to 10/1. Delta tech support told me AM award buckets C and U are changing to O and X after 9/30 (to be consistent with other skyteam partners). It sounded like they saw C and U inventory loaded after 9/30 and this is why there was no O or X inventory, because it had been loaded to the wrong award buckets after 9/30. I’m hoping that’s the case, but it could also be that AM is drastically reducing award space at the same time they change bucket codes. Does that make sense?
Actually, now that I read what you wrote here about Vietnam Airlines, this could be similarly bad news for biz award space on Aeromexico:
http://blog.wandr.me/2013/02/changes-coming-to-vietnam-airlines-award-booking-codes/
This is wonderful, but do you know why every time I search for MEX-EZE it shows me the results for MEX-GRU?
Seth
What is wrong?
This is the only blog without the Chase 60k offer!
🙂
Thanks for the heads up
Thanks for this, Seth! I need to get rid of a lot of Sky Pesos. Maybe I can get a JFK-MEX Dreamliner flight out of them.
@ffi: Yup…no CC shilling here. Never has been and never will be. I prefer to provide original content and tools to help rather than be a “me too” chasing affiliate revenue.
@James: That’s sortof on purpose. The way the tool works is that it searches for many viable options on the route in question in the necessary fare class and operated by the requested airline. In your case the MEX-EZE search is showing O inventory on AM for MEX-GRU and then a connection, likely on LAN, for GRU-EZE which is also available in O class. That doesn’t actually help for an AM award so I filter it out, but the option with the AM inventory is there so I show it, just in case it gets you close enough. If you are redeeming SkyMiles you might try to piece together AM+AR to finish it off, for example, and this lets you know that you can get to GRU on AM. And if you search on 6 October 2013 you should see the non-stop with seats, in addition to the connections (in MIA, CUN and GRU on that day).
Does that make sense??
What?!?!? There’s a 60k chase offer? How did I miss it at blog.wandr.me?
That does make sense, Seth. Thank you. Really appreciate your work, even if it’s depressing to see how little MEX-EZE availability there is, somewhat putting the kibosh on my IAD-MEX, MEX-EZE, MEX-EZE-IAD skymiles plans.