Phantom Availability? Help Please
 

Hi all,

I was searching Business Class award space between MAD and MIA and came across and oddity that i was hoping someone may be able to help with.

Both the BA and Qantas websites show no Iberia Business Class availability on MAD-MIA-MAD for travel outbound 3 March and inbound 19 March....but Iberia Plus shows availability. I've seen other examples of this too.

I haven't transferred points to Iberia Plus yet so I can't go past the screen that prices the award up and tells me I don't have enough Avios for the award....so it would be very helpful if someone would check to see if these flights are actually bookable on Iberia or if it's phantom space.

TIA.

Well, assuming you have an active IB+ account you can freely transfer back and forth between BA and IB. But yes, it's often the case that partner availability is different.

I don't know that I've ever seen seats being offered that were not actually there (sometimes the opposite happens).

I agree with LupineChemist.

You could call IB+ and have them confirm that those seats are really available. However, in the worst case you could always transfer the points back to BAEC.

This is a very common occurence in Economy (because IB offers two levels of Economy redemptions on its website, Azul and Turista) but BAEC only sees the first. It's less common in Business, but I have seen it happen too.

Thanks for the replies - I'll have to call Iberia when my Skype starts working again. It's Amex MR I plan to transfer in to Iberia so I don't have the option of transferring them back out should availability not be there.

Keep in mind that AMEX MR transfer to IB+ are not instantaneous, they usually take 24h and can be a couple of days.