Seats are back today…

There's gotta be something special about the NAN-SYD route.

Looking to tack on a flight to an existing YVR-NAN itinerary. Site shows 2 J seats available. Call in, partner desk agent says he only sees coach. I say ok, let's add that, I'll deal with business later. Booking is updated, I go online, try to switch the seat to business, fails.

Go to AA's website, it shows the two seats no problem.

Now, something interesting. I picked a different flight in the day that had availability. First time through, it gave me an error I had never seen before:

The second attempt went through. And then, after that, I was able to switch back to the original flight in J.

Frankly that's just excuses they are told to tell you. They don't know any better than we do. The seats last year were visible for days and yet remained non-bookable on Alaska while being fully available on American. The seats I booked earlier this week failed to go through when attempting to switch from economy to business on the same flight, but then booked successfully when switching from a business seat on another flight back to this same flight.

And each time I booked, the inventory immediately was reflected on AS's website.

Phantom Availability for Partner Awards
 

so Alaska now is showing more flights ( in this case its AA mileage flight) but..... as Springsteen said, "you can look but you better not touch"
they show flights BUT they are not available, you go through the entire booking process, only to find out at the end, those seats are not available.
I spoke with an agent yesterday, they agreed, thought it was a glitch. Today via chat, I was told that's the way it is now (TS).
This is a major downgrade and a complete waste of time. They are selling flights they do not have and you do not find out until the end that you need to look elsewhere. Gold's can have agent search w/o fee so its now better to call in many instances.

To clarify what you are trying to say: if you attempt to book certain flights with reward miles you will not find out till the end that they are not available?

yeah, I've had this happen a few times where AS is showing 4500 miles for a short-distance AA flight, but the purchase screen burps with something like: "The flight you have selected is no longer available. Please select another flight or date."

if AA offers the same flight for over ~9k, it basically tells me that AS is still seeing the lowest level availability ... so the issue isn't so much a deliberate devaluation of the program as it is the accuracy / currency of the data they're pulling from AA

Sadly this is how it has been with partner awards for a loooonnng time now.

clickbait

Problem booking awards
 

I've been trying to book a trip with my points. The trip that comes up is on Singapore Airlines but every single time I try to book, I get an error message. When I called they just said: sorry we are having problems. I mean what's the point of showing seats available if they are not able to book the seats? I'm really thinking this is not worth it and I should move to another one world FF program.

I wasn't fast enough to take screenshots but something was going on with SQ awards today because J awards from Zurich to at least two cities that I was checking on in Asia, were coming up as 25,000 miles one way! I hesitated because it's on the A359, and I didn't want to fly that seat again, so I tried looking at other departure cities, but they were coming back with 110,000 miles. By the time I went back to my cart to check out, I got the error message and prices are now all 110K.

It's because the data on the website isn't constantly refreshed. I recently booked a China to LA itinerary all in J on Singapore using AS miles, but had the same thing happen to me twice while trying to book, where the website shows availability but cannot be booked. Eventually, after those two misses, I got the seats.

I was having problems booking an award ticket using AS miles for an AA flight. Could get all the way to end and pressed purchase then it would say couldn’t confirm. I called CS and they were able to get the ticket booked. However as a 100K one world emerald when I went onto AA app it wouldn’t let me choose premium seats. I called AS CS back and they said AA may have rules about “free” tickets.

Correct me if I’m wrong it’s not free first of all, second I’ve been using miles to fly numerous AA flight (just did yesterday) and was able to immediately select premium seats and get free bag checks.

I too had problem booking AA award for all of May. I tried numerous dates and routings from the listing that was provided by AS app. I was wondering if my previously selected failed routing were only available to AA elites...not knowing the reasoning, I did eventually find one routing that worked.

I was however able to select Preferred seats on AA

Update: I called AA customer service line this morning. My AS frequent flyer number was not visible on the AA system and thus didn’t recognize status. The AA person placed in my number and then asked me to go on app and check and select seat. This took about 3 minutes from me dialing to resolution. They also confirmed I was on the FC upgrade list.