As an alternative, there appear to be 2 J seats on PHL-MAN on the A330 on 9/14 and 9/16. You'll have to use BA to get to MUC, which will incur fees, but shouldn't be more than $100 per person. I think you could do something like MSY-CLT-PHL-MAN-LHR-MUC.

On the return, there are 2 J seats on IB MAD-SJU on 9/25 an 9/26. IB has surcharges but they are much less than BA. You could do MUC-MAD-SJU-MIA-MSY.

You can probably put the outbound on hold on AA.com using a multi-city search and call in and have it repriced, but no way to book IB online at AA.com

Question: my domestic legs have a connection. I was thinking I could call over the coming months to try to swap to non-stop domestic. Does that mean the agent needs to cancel and re-book the international segments? I'm a little paranoid about losing the sAAvers.

(when booking, the system crashed a few times and she had to go all the way back to beginning - and I was positive the sAAver seats were going to vanish)

You should be able to change w/o issue as long as O/D remains the same...and AA actually opens up sAAver space for 4 on preferred direct flights!

I'm planning a trip to Japan with a friend of mine, he's trying to use his AA miles on CX and JL but the AA agents keep insisting there's no award inventory even though it appears on ba.com. NRT-LAX on JL F and HKG-DXB on CX J—both show awards on ba.com but multiple AA agents say it doesn't exist. The CX award also appears on the JL site, so that one isn't a BA problem.

Weekend maintenance, phantom inventory on BA or is AA blocking awards?

I may try going through the Australian call center, since that's been working with EY.

Looks spiffy !

HA!! You wanna know the truth? You saw it before I did! I almost posted "what looks spiffy?" :)

Obviously still stuff left to do-- no way to log in that I can see, etc.

Well, that was odd. I called to try placing a hold on a CX J segment and when they tried to verify my address, they didn't match. The AA number was correct and the address I gave matched the address on my profile.

:confused:

Maybe they are just having IT trouble today.

edit: Found an agent that could see the NRT-LAX inventory on JL but he's saying a one-way in F NRT-LAX-SAT comes to 112k miles! What on earth is going on at AA today?

At the risk of seeming ignorant, what is "phantom inventory?"

I just signed up on Expert Flyer for a trip from TPA to FCO next October I checked available first and business seats for 10/24/2016, and the only business seats according to EF were through ORD. AA, OTOH, had 4 pages of such seat, mostly through MIA and LHR, but a few were through CLT-LHR-FCO. Who am I to believe - EF or AA?

It is award inventory that appears available when you search (on BA, AA, etc.) but is not actually available. AA has been having issues on its website with phantom inventory lately, e.g. Finnair flights will appear to have avilable award seats when in fact they do not.

As usual, HUACA works. Just scored 2 SAT-DFW-NRT in C, NRT-LAX-SAT in F, HND-HKG in F, HKG-DXB in C and AUH-DFW-SAT in F for my friend and his wife. Eventually found an agent who could see the inventory (plus the AUS office for EY).

So nothing too unusual about it, just a string of lousy agents.

I, erroneously, booked 2 seats on the 10/24/2106, which AA confirmed as "Hold." I cancelled the Hold because I actually want the 31st. But if I had left the Hold on for the specified period, what could I expect that AA would have done? Advise that it was not available or let me confirm the booking?

If you had left the hold, the hold would have expired and automatically cancelled without you having to doing anything. If there had been phantom availability, you wouldn't have been able to hold anything in the first place.

Thank you. I guess it was a real availability. Now I will hope that the same availability comes up for a week later. But why are there no seats shown on Expert Flyer for the TPA-MIA-LHR-FCO route? I did just book one seat for the 31st on that date? AA does show some availability, just not on the particular flight that I want. (I need two seats) It makes me wonder about the use of Expert Flyer.

So I booked this award.

BKK.. HKG... NRT... ORD

On JAL and cx first.

I need to get from ord to San. There was no reward seats available. There are now.

The AA agent said they need to redeposit the moles and book again. Is this true? The tax went up 5 which is fine.