anaggie

I tried to book a flight that I found on Google Flights from ELP-DFW-LIM-DFW-ELP for June of next year. Flights are operated by AA in J.

Flight from ELP-DFW has an AA flight number, while the DFW-LIM and return have a LA flight number.

Called LATAm and they gave me a case number and told me to call back 48hrs later. Called them back 48hrs later and they can't book the ticket. I have to go thru AA which has priced the ticket approx $1000 more.

How do I go about booking this ticket?

Thanks in advance.

sdsearch

If you can't book through Google Flights, try looking it up somewhere else. For example, if you look it up on Kayak Flights and get a similar rate, it should give you a button for going to the site which provided that rate.

Unlike hotels, there's no big downside (especially if you have no status) of booking flights through a (reputable) third party website rather than the airline's own site.

So the trick is to find which site(s) have the rate you saw on Google Flights. (Does Google Flights not show which site provided that rate?)

anaggie

Google flights says that to call LATAM to book. Let me try thru Kayak.

anaggie

Couldn't do it thru Kayak or any other sites ...maybe a travel agent?

sdsearch

Another possibility is that Google is simply displaying an invalid fare.

I don't know how Google comes up with fares which can't be booked online (since it presumably can't be getting them through an online search). Many fares have complex routing rules, carrier rules, travel date rules, booking date rules, etc, etc, which read many paragraphs. It could be that Google used a fare which would have been valid had X been the case but X is not the case, and so the fare is not actually bookable.

I've certainly run into other cases online where some website claimed that something was bookable when it had restrictions which made it unbookable. For example, for an African safari booking for which a promo rate only exists when booking less than 30 days out, one website showed that promo rate for every booking date you tried. Of course, the website didn't let you complete an instantly-confirmed booking (you had to make a request, and then they'd get back to you). I didn't bother trying to book there, but I can guess what I would gotten back in response had I tried to book an "out of date range" booking for that rate.

There's also plenty of airline sites that show "phantom" availability for award flights, which aren't bookable by anyone if you try to actually book them.

So there is plenty of precedent for online sites sometimes showing unbookable fares.

jimmielin

You might want to reach to a travel agent, or try to price it up on ITA Matrix first. My experience is that most of these LA/JJ fares are bookable - I personally managed to snag a couple AA J seats from BSB to MEX via GRU, with all the long-hauls on AA metal, JJ code and the only involvement JJ metal had on the itinerary was the BSB-GRU domestic segment. ITA priced it at 1/3 the price on AA code, and I couldn't get it to work on any OTAs, so had to call a travel agent to do it. But it was bookable and flew it without problems, so you might want to find a travel agent who can book it.