It can be tricky because LAN itself does not support redemptions for nonstop one-way travel. So it can be tricky on LAN's own site to figure out if a flight you intend to book with a partner airline's miles for a nonstop one-way trip is actually available.

Second, the problem with AAgents seeing a flight does not have to do with whether it exists at LAN or not. It has to do AFAIK with the LAN-to-AA interface (they use different reservation systems and the translation between the two appears to be unreliable). As such, I'm not sure that LAN itself would be any better a predictor of what AAgents can see than OW partners.

Third, the people in the LAN forum go on and on about how poorly the LAN site works for redemption lookup (beyond the one-way issue). So it's not even clear whether LAN's website always shows all the LAN availability or not.

The problem with AAgents not seeing what BA can see is not "phantom" inventory (or at least not always), because I had a situation a year or two ago where I saw a LAN flight on BA.com, tried to book with with AA miles, AA couldn't see it, and I turned around actually booked it with BA Avios (this was before the BA Avios devaluation last year). In the other direction (which I also ended up booking with BA Avios), AA was able to see it. So both directions were actually bookable, but AA was only able to see one of them.

Wow, thanks a lot for the detailed explanation, I really appreciate it.

Related to the "phantom" availability issue, what I have seen is that the number of seats available is sometimes inflated on BA.com. I had three or four situations this week where BA showed 4+ seats available (often 7) but once I booked one or two the space completely disappeared. So I definitely wouldn't blindly trust the number of seats shown on BA.com. For instance, today BA showed 7 seats available on SCL-SYD one day in September, I called and booked two of those seats and then right after that I checked again and there was nothing left. I highly doubt that someone else snagged 5 seats at the exact moment, so my advice would be: when calling to book, always try to make the booking for all pax in one single call, otherwise you risk having the space disappear.

All very true.

The primary issue is AA system does not talk to LAN system in a seamless way and this has been the issue for several years but has never really had any meaningful improvement even AA has long admitted the problems in the past. A few years ago friend had to go all the way to OneWorld VP of marketing to get AA booked his LAN flights. (Friend saw a news piece in newspaper in it the marketing VP of OneWorld touted the benefits OW members could enjoy while he was really struggling in booking a trip on LAN. He contacted this guy's office with the issues and said office contacted AA - eventually AA called the friend to eventually ticket the award.)

I could book none of the seats I saw on BA through AA. I called and repeatedly tried to book J space I saw on BA for JFK-LIM in June and none of the seats that BA saw were visible to AA.

Strangely enough, an AAgent was able to find and book me a J seat JFK-LIM that didn't show on BA or QF. It was just a day off from my desired day so I nabbed it anyways.

I'm not sure if the seats on BA are completely "phantom". Since I have some Avios, I tried booking a seat that didn't show to AA and it ticketed without issue (I refunded within 24 hours - didn't want to use 60,000 Avios on a seat without the connectors, when the all-in cost on AA is only 30,000 on AA.

I ticketed my reservation (with LAN segments) on the 4th day of a 5 day hold. AA agent did not have a problem process the ticketing but the status still "on request" after 10 hours. Call AA back and was told that ticketing can take up to 3 days. flyingeph12 seems to have success going pass 3 day hold.

When do I panic? Should I call AA on daily basis?

I have just recently (last week) ticketed three different LAN awards on the 4th day of the hold and it took probably around 24 hours to get it ticketed the first time around. I have since then made changes twice to all of them and every single time it took just a couple of hours to get the new dates ticketed. So, unless you're already flying this week, I definitely wouldn't worry and would wait at least three days before calling.

As a side note, all the agents told me that I should receive an email with the itinerary within 24 hours, which I never did, but everything was ticketed properly a day after. My guess is that there's bug on the email sending code or something—even though I was able to email the trip details without issues upon logging in into AA.com.

I ticketed my reservation after a 3 day hold. Took almost 72 hours for ticketing to complete and everything was fine. You have nothing to worry about. :)

Yes. AA system has glitches not sending out e-Ticket emails. It is random.

You can ask the agent to re-send eTicket - some agents are aware of the issue and know how to do the request (apparently it goes thru a different dept) some agents dont know what that means and just email you the itinerary. Yet some other agents would send you something called eTDS Itinerary Document which is not an e-Ticket but it has far more USEFUL information on your trip than either the e-Ticket or the plain itinerary, such as partners PNRs, airport terminals the flights leave, etc. I like this document a lot.

You can also use the button of Print Itinerary and Receipt to get the latest e-Ticket issued.

Thank you very much for your reassurance. I got my confirmed ticket on the 14th hour.

Has anyone figured out if there's any logic around when LAN releases space for SCL-SYD and SYD-SCL (or likewise, SCL-AKL and AKL-SCL)?

I keep reading about the ~330 days out thingy but it does not seem to apply for this specific route, even though it does apply to others, e.g. SCL-JFK and even the SYD-AKL short hop.

I have been monitoring this route since December and the only change I saw was that a couple of months ago I could see space through end of Oct, and this past month I started to see things up until end of Nov.

It *seems* like eventually they will open up space in December if that trend follows, but I'm interested in hearing what everyone else's experiences have been for this specific route.

I definitely wouldn't count on it.

Completing Patagonia itinerary: BUE-FTE & PUQ-SCL
 

I've been searching on BA.com on and off and can't find space on the two specific days I want to travel. Assumptions:

- BA.com correctly shows award space.
- No alerts available, so I have to manually search each time.

I know at least PUQ-SCL is fairly cheap, but I would love to score these for 6k AA miles apiece.
Any advice on how often to check for these awards?

I find it easier to search BA via www.awardnexus.com (some searches free to FT members; click "more signup options" under the green Purchase button to sign up as an FT member), and you can search OW via QF there too. And if QF returns stuff and BA returns nothing, that's a good indication that BA is broken at the moment. In fact, on routes that both BA and QF would show if they both worked, I just search QF (to converve AwardNexus points).

And if you want to pay a little, Award Nexus can do alerts (alerts are not part of the free version for FT members, but it's very easy to repeat the same search again with a few clicks, so even manually it's way way easier than using the BA website).

I was aware of Awardnexus. The price is too high tho (~$100) - seems like he gets fewer subscribers, so needs to make the $ at a lower volume.

I'm a bit lost here, it is the first time i try to use BA tool... and i'm trying to find a TAM Economy or Business out of Caracas.

So i think i put everything well in the search engine: And every Saturday (which is supposedly to be the TAM frequency) I get no availability. I am a newbie here and i don't have no clue, can anyone teach me how to search for

CCS-GRU (TAM)
GRU-EZE (Qatar)

OneWorld Partner award?

Or TAM awards just don't exist out of Caracas??? (any dates- Using AA miles would be South America Region 2 to South America Region 2)