Originally Posted by
Herman ze German
Ah, that explains a lot. I didn't see any BA flights in our booking tool, tried again and they were there but when trying to book got the message that they were no longer available. Called our corp travel centre and they told me that the flight was wide open but they couldn't book it either. Apparently they managed to get me on the waitlist (is that a different system or did they just tell me rubbish)
If they use Sabre or some-such, they are probably telling the truth. When the links are down* between the end-user GDS (the GDS of your agency) and the native GDS of the airline (BA's Amadeus), then the end-user GDS can waitlist seats, but not confirm (HK) seats. As soon as the link comes back up, the end-user GDS will try to confirm the seats.
* Obviously in this case, it's more than just the links being down--the whole GDS is down! Our Amadeus reps are telling us that they were in the process of an upgrade that was just supposed to have the system down for a few minutes, but something went wrong and it's been down for a long time.