lkar

Sorry if this is a basic question but I'm not very good with avios and booking awards with them is rare for me.

I am trying to book LIH-PHX in F. AA metal. It is available on AA.com as a saver award and appears to be available to be booked through partners, such as Qantas and Alaska. Expert Flyer shows "U" availability, which I thought was the code that was available to partners like BA for award booking. Because of the mileage chart, it is cheaper if I can use avios but I cannot get the award to be displayed using the BA.com search.

Does BA have less availability to AA awards than other partners or is this some sort of point of sale limitation based on booking site used? I assume if BA doesn't "see" it, I'm out of luck but I thought I'd ask before I use Alaska miles so I can save myself a few miles.

mikeyfly

Good answer to this question recently in the main spending Avios thread Your guide to spending Avios | 2021 edition

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/32929430-post14.html

lkar

Aha, thanks. So not an isolated incident. It appears that sometimes BA.com does not display AA awards even when the correct fare bucket for the award is available, just from going through some of those threads. In my case, I do not think this is a case of the award on AA being a web special and not a miles-saver, given that other partners seem to see the space and it comes up as a miles-saver on expert flyer. I'll try to call them later today.

corporate-wage-slave

It tends to be quite tricky to know how to reply to questions like this (which come up from time to time) without dates and flight numbers. But if a general answer will do:
- Yes you can see F availability on AA services (or rather I can)
- I am not aware of anything changing, but IT outages can sometimes explain variations
- There are circumstances where you won't see options online, notably if you have to connecting services, searching by leg may work
- Sometimes you are best to call up.
- Some AA rewards are for AA members only.

lkar

I finally got around to calling today. I hate calling. Anyway, it was indeed a failure of BA.com to display award availability on AA metal.

Iberia, Qantas, and Alaska all could see the award and expert flyer showed that availability was there in the required class. So I called and they could see the space. Booked no problem and waived the phone fee so all good.

But at least one instance of BA.com just not seeing partner space that is in fact there.