NJUPINTHEAIR

Sorry if this sort of issue has occurred beforehand.

I was under the belief that any US Air flight that appeared as an award on AA.com would be reproduced on BA.com for Avios booking.

Therefore, I was looking on BA.com first for flights from NYC to Charlotte, NC - a US hub -- over MLK weekend and expected to find them plentiful -- NOT.

I was amazed so I thought I would check on AA.com and there they are in all their glory, including non-stops from EWR!

So, nada on BA.com, but an amazing amount on AA.com.

Can someone explain what gives???

3Cforme

I've seen AA saver inventory domestically that isn't offered by BA.com online. Whether that's just an inventory sync problem that is intermittent I don't have enough info to say. The same thing with US-operated flights isn't a surprise.

bk3day

fwiw, if you've been searching BA.com using "NYC", try instead using each individual airport.

Sometimes that will force the available flights with award space to show.

Otherwise iirc, you can call BA but that's a real PITA

seawolf

I don't think every AA award is made available to partners....similar to how some CX award seats are only avail to AsiaMiles members.

arlflyer

Just try again. I've seen entire carriers' inventory disappear off of BA.com for periods of hours here and there, especially nights and weekends.

I just searched now...JFK-CLT, space available on...

Friday, January 16, 2015
US413
US537
US887
US1919
US425

Saturday, January 17, 2015
US413
US537
US887
US1972
US1798
US425

Sunday, January 18, 2015
US461
US537
US1972
US1798
US425

Monday, January 19, 2015
US413
US537
US887
US2063
US1919

Space in F, space in Y, whatever you want, all direct.

Even more out of Newark, every day, bunch of flights, no need to write it all out.

GUWonder

Call up BA and tell them which specific flight number/date you want to book using BA points, and inform them your effort to do so online seems to have hit a problem and can't be booked online. That will commonly get BA to waive fees for telephone booking, and the manual search (by the BA rep) usually makes things (which show up for AA/US flights on aa.com) available for booking with BA points regardless of what britishairways.com does or does not show. There are some exceptions to this, but they are far more rare than BA's website makes it seem.

If there are too many available flights between the desired city pairs, it's quite routine that BA website only shows the earlier ones in the day.

NJUPINTHEAIR

Thanks all for the suggestions, etc. -- esp. doing a separate airport search -- I have done that in the past and it is esp. good in displaying those later flights that sometimes get cut off at around mid-afternoon on BA.com.

FWIW, I checked yesterday and BA.com displayed many more flights than they had before -- whereas there was no award space on Saturday and Sunday, now there was -- not as much as was displayed on AA.com, but sufficient enough that one would not need to go thru the hassle of calling them and waiting an interminable amount of time before they would answer and then asking of space was available and then requesting the waiver of the phone booking fee.

So, some of your observations were, indeed, spot on -- inventory actually disappears in its entirety at times.

Many thanks, all!

GUWonder

My Skype call times to BA to make BAEC point bookings for AA flights -- even when not using my BA elite status line to use points from a non-status account -- average under 10 minutes.

Sometimes the call wait can be rather long --30-45 minutes happens too -- but once I've got a phone rep then it's taken me only several minutes to get the ticket booked. The calls to book take longer than if booking it online; but for a route such as LGA to ORD, sometimes there is no better option than a phone call when wanting to use BA points for AA flights in the late afternoon or evening hours.

NJUPINTHEAIR

Thanks, GU!