Flying Blue (Air France, KLM, and Other Partners) - Award seats online but not via direct call?

I was investigating award seats on Air France from LAX-PPT in October. At first I called the Air France Flying Blue number, and a customer service rep checked basically each day of the month and kept saying "sorry no availability."

Then I logged on to the AF Flying Blue site and when I searched for award tix, they were available on just about every day I wanted to fly.

Does anyone know whether the "availability" I was seeing was actual availability, or whether the system was just showing me how many miles the flight would cost if there was availability.

Thanks all.

I was investigating award seats on Air France from LAX-PPT in October. At first I called the Air France Flying Blue number, and a customer service rep checked basically each day of the month and kept saying "sorry no availability."

Then I logged on to the AF Flying Blue site and when I searched for award tix, they were available on just about every day I wanted to fly.

Does anyone know whether the "availability" I was seeing was actual availability, or whether the system was just showing me how many miles the flight would cost if there was availability.

Thanks all.

You can always check to see if the flight is available, but sometimes with multiple legs in one journey this might be wrong. For instance a flight AMS - CUN, is a flight via MEX. It showed availability and the miles needed for the flight, however when I wanted to book at the end it said this flight isn't available anymore. It seemed that on the short flight there is hardly any award tix.

If you call the customer service, tell them to insert your Frequent Flyer number BEFORE checking for availability. This will trigger additional availability for Elite pax.