Discrepancies surrounding award availability
 

Has anyone else experienced discrepancies in award availability between co.com & KVS Availability Tool & Continental telephone agents? I had been waiting patiently for weeks for award availability to show up for a flight and I had been checking diligently, sometimes 2 or 3 times daily. No go, no award Saver seats at all. Finally, I call the elite desk to find out about another flight I am on and I ask them to check the itinerary I had been trying to book. Bam! Plenty of availability on their end. While on the phone with the agent and before she booked the award ticket, I quickly check on both co.com and KVS Availability Tool and I find no availability at all. So obviously something is going on when award tickets (on CO metal) aren't showing up on co.com or KVS.

Then the agent tries to hit me with the $25 per ticket call center fee which I politely decline to pay since the rewards weren't available online. Luckily, she agreed so the fees were waived.

What's the deal with award seats being available but not "available on co.com or KVS"?

Do you have elite status? That can change the coach inventory on CO metal in your favor. And if you are platinum then you get increased forward cabin inventory, too. CO will not publish that inventory into StarNet so the ANA search engine won't reflect it. And that's what the KVS tool is showing you.

Dunno why it wouldn't show on co.com. Were you signed in when searching? Did you try searching segment-by-segment rather than full itineraries? Maybe something else, too.

Good work on that front. According to CO Insider that policy has changed so you got lucky they waived it.

Could you provide more details, such as origin/destination, carrier (if not CO) and some dates? I find this very interesting.

I am elite, and I was signed in when searching but I wasn't trying to book forward cabin inventory. I think the reason they waived the fee was because they also had to redeposit my miles and issue new tickets because I had to change my destination because the flight schedule changed by a few hours so I could no longer take the original flight because it would put me into my final destination too late. I tried searching segment by segment and full itinerary. I couldn't find availability either way.

The exact flight I was trying to book was completely on CO metal and was from CLT-GUA from March 9-14. There was plenty of SaverPass availability on the outbound segment but absolutely no EasyPass on the return segment in Y or F. I just checked again (3:20 on 12/15) and there is no SaverPass Y availability, but there does appear to be SaverPass F availability, but it's a combination of CO & US metal.

I found it very interesting as well which is why I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this before.