After repeated failures to clear the award standby list in 2024, I was successful in my first attempt to score a standby first class award seat on Korean Air in 2025.
Korean Air Standby Award Booking: Success
Korean Air has an award waitlist feature, allowing you to waitlist for the cabin of service you wish to fly and then wait (hope, pray…) that your seat will clear. It costs nothing to waitlist and your miles are not deducted immediately, allowing you to waitlist for multiple flights at once even with insufficient miles (you just need enough miles for the specific flight(s) you are waitlisting on).
Up until the merger with Aisana closed, Korean Air restricted all first class awards, not making any available. But that has recently changed and the carrier is finally making first class award seats available again.
I’ve got a stash of Korean Air SKYPASS miles dating back to the Chase Ultimate Rewards partnership days and have been waiting patiently (for six years!) to fly Korean Air First. Korean offers a first class cabin on select Boeing 777 aircraft and all Airbus A380 and Boeing 747-8 aircraft.
As much as I love the A380, I wanted to fly on 747-8 in first class, which features the carrier’s most spacious Kosmo 2.0 suites. That aircraft operates daily from Atlanta, which I wanted to book because 1.) it’s a daytime service and 2.) it’s the longest 747-8 flight at 7,152 miles.
I added myself to the waitlist three weeks before the flight and the waitlist cleared one week before the flight. I was notified via text message:
Once your waitlist clears, you can go online to complete your purchase (the reservation will be stored under your account). In my case, I called in to add a connection to Hong Kong, which is not possible online because that segment is in business class (but cost no extra miles because Hong Kong and South Korea are in the same region). Both segments cost 80,000 points and about 349 USD in taxes/fees.
While Korean Air appears to be making first class space on the 777 and some A380 flights available online, I have not seen 747-8 first class space open…but if you want to fly first class on the 747-8, try the waitlist feature. It (finally) worked for me…
What a difference a year makes! You can see my frustration from April 2024 below. But the times have changed!
Well, so much for flying home on Korean Air after I failed to clear a single flight off the waitlist using my SkyPass points with its “Standby Award Booking” tool.
Korean Air SkyPass Waitlist For Award Flights: I Went 0/15 On This Trip Using Standby Award Booking…
Korean Air SkyPass may have delayed a devaluation to its award charts, but it also stopped releasing first class award space altogether…not a single flight on a single date has first class award availability and it has been that way for months…
But Korean Air also has an award waitlist feature, allowing you to waitlist for the cabin of service you wish to fly and then wait (hope, pray…) that your seat will clear. It costs nothing to waitlist and your miles are not deducted immediately, allowing you to waitlist for multiple flights at once even with insufficient miles (you just need enough miles for the specific flight(s) you are waitlisting on).
When searching for award space, you can click on the light blue “Go To Standby Award Booking” button on the bottom right corner of the screen.
Then check off the box(es) of the flight(s) you want standby on and click next.
Fill out the required info and then click on “Request for Award Standby Booking” and a booking confirmation is generated. It just takes a few seconds.
In my case, I have 80K SkyPass miles left (the cost of a one-way first class award between North America and South Korea) and waitlisted for five flights a day for three days in a row:
- Atlanta (daily flight) – 747-8
- Los Angeles (two daily flights) – A380
- New York (two daily flights) – 747-8
If the standby clears, you are supposed to receive a mobile message and/or email.
If the standby does not clear within 24 hours of departure, it is automatically dropped off.
Nothing cleared on the first day.
Nothing cleared on the second day.
By the third day (nothing cleared again), I gave up and flew home on a walk-up United ticket ($1238 one-way premium economy, upgraded to Polaris Business class).
I could have flown in business class on the A380 to LAX, but I’m still holding out hope for first class…maybe foolishly.
The sad thing? All of the flights above went out with open first class seats…including EIGHT to Los Angeles.
CONCLUSION
Korean Air may not have devalued its award chart, but it is not releasing first class award space at this time. If my experience is any indicator, the waitlist/standby function is theoretical too…of the 15 flights I waitlisted to travel from Seoul to the USA, none of them cleared despite many open seats.
Has anyone had success recently clearing the Korean Air waitlist?
image: Korean Air
I’d be thrilled to hear what readers in Korea have to say. Are there 10 pax wait listed on every flight so they don’t want this to be an easy thing to count on, or do they simply not release any space?
I wonder what the rationale is to have the plane leave with empty seats in that class and not allow the upgrade. Why offer it in first place? Is it because of catering or people needed to work on that cabin to serve more passengers?
Can’t be catering because the waitlist closes at 24 hours prior to departure (plenty of time to add an extra meal or two).
I meant cost of catering. Could it be they are trying to save money on the more expensive food/beverage that would be served to non-revenue passengers in first class? You said 8 empty seats on first class. If they had to serve food and beverage to those 8 seats and they were filled with non-revenue passengers that would be an extra cost they might not be willing to take. Other than that, having someone sitting on the seat is sunk cost.
Absolutely right. Why not get rid of some accrued liability by allowing people to redeem miles for otherwise empty seats?
I actually had a KLM flight cancel on the AMS-ORD leg of a HAN-CDG-AMS-ORD FB Award ticket and was rebooked on HAN-ICN-ORD with ICN-ORD on a 777 with F. The interesting thing was that I was given a F seat with the J meal. Apparently I wasn’t the only one as their were 6 others in F seats with J meal service. Makes me wonder if they are even selling F.
I’m curious too. I still have leftover skypass miles (85k) and would like to use it for an F class redemption.
KAL is shady. There was a fairly priced RT F fare to Bali in 2022 or 2023 that KAL ended up unilaterally canceling.
Seems very clear based on your experience and eight seats going empty to LAX that they are simply blocking all F redemptions, period. Given how the South Korean Government went after them for devaluations this must be their version of retaliation. Sounds like the Government should again go after them for falsely promoting F redemptions with no intent of actually providing them.
What I’ve heard via word-of-mouth is your waitlist for First is now manually cleared per your prior relationship & spend w/ KAL. Meaning, you have basically zero chance as a one-time flyer using miles
Ouch. Can I call and beg?
Maybe you can attempt DYKWIA
With a Korean Chaebol? They will not care LOL
Was being sarcastic
You’ll probably have better (but minimal) luck showing up at a ticketing office to explain, preferably after having booked a premium cabin ticket with cash or explained a relationship to a Korean company whose business they value.
AFAIK, the last blogger review was from Sam Chui (ATL-ICN). I wonder if he pulled the blogger card (as he almost always does…or if this was just the last gasp of first class points bookings).
I flew it in May 2023 ICN => Atlanta and booked in September 2022 or so when some Flyertalker reported a few seats had become available. Never saw a single First seat to LAX, JFK, or SFO (only other routes I checked) since February 2020.
Sam Chui could also just be wealthy enough to book the ticket outright with cash?
He is, but he’s too cheap…
@Matthew: The ongoing discussion of KoreanAir’s ongoing award restrictions: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/korean-air-skypass/2082616-has-korean-gutted-awards.html
Thanks. Interesting.
KE F isn’t that great. I’d just burn the miles. Or walk away from them.
I did the same with 47 flights across five days earlier this year (LAX JFK ATL SFO LHR CDG). Gave up after day 1 when one of the ICN-SFO flights went out literally empty in F. Kept the standby bookings just to see and of course nothing came through either. This is quite unfortunate.
Sad data point. Thanks for sharing.
Very disappointing.
I booked KAL F on ICN-ATL in January 2023 to fly in January 2024. I think they pulled all first class awards sometime in Q1 of 2023. What an absolute shame.
I really enjoyed my first class experience, and I would love to fly them again, next time on the A380.
I don’t know if they open up the first class cabin on widebodies for short- and medium-haul flights. The laat time I hecked (for BKK-ICN) they didn’t. But that might be another way to try to fly KE F on the A380.
I am a Korean and read a post from an online Korean community. One employee from Korean air who works at mileage team told a customer that the company decided to not release the first class mileage tickets after they failed to devaluate the mileage program by the government. There was no official news but this is somewhat commonly acknowledged in many Korean mileage communities. Don’t know if this policy would change in the future but this is what we are experiencing at the moment.
They have gotten rid of first class awards flights. That’s what I was told by someone. Only business and economy for awards availability. They even got rid of multi city awards flights.
Can someone let me know if awards flights for prestige will be working towards Sept? Or if you’ve had any luck booking prestige and up with award miles?
I’ve had my first class standbys clear but it was always manually. I would get a call 24-48 hrs before the scheduled departure from a non-specific number that turned out to be a Korean Air representative asking if I still wanted the award space. once I confirmed they would confirm the booking. If you miss the call they automatically cancel your standby booking.
How recently was this?
Nice! AS award calendar is a good tool for KE J for anyone looking LAX/ATL-ICN. It’s fleeting but good for those flexible & willing to locate. I took a pass since I was booked on Starlux SFO-TPE for 75k.
That’s gonna be a great flight Matthew. Some ding bat vlogger recently slept the entire way in Korean Air First Class from ICN to LAX. Why skip the main meal service in international first class ? To each their own.