mpeterson78

In the past I've been able to use British Airways' site to look for LAN/TAM award space for intra-South America flights, but now I can't find any, for any dates, on any routes LAN/TAM operate. Any reason why these wouldn't be showing up anymore?

Jeffmiyagi

Interesting. I just posted this in another thread as I'm trying to find seats to Easter Island. Nothing, doesn't matter the class, on any day. Don't see anything.

sdsearch

I use www.awardnexus.com (click "more signup options" under the green Purchase button to sign up for free as a FlyerTalk member) which can pull either BA and/or QF for OW award inventory (but uses a much simpler user interface that's the same no matter which airline's site it's searching behind the scenes). QF often produces results that BA doesn't, though you'd think theory they should have about the same results.

Ie, BA often has trouble showing inventory that exists, so it's far from the best way to check OW inventory.

Jeffmiyagi

Thanks, I'll check that out

sdsearch

Also, be aware that at least on its own site, LATAM does not allow single-flight one-way redemptions. Officially it requires round trip redemptions, though some people have been able to trick it with "open jawish" redemptions.

I don't know whether they apply the same restrictions to redemptions through partners or not.

So especially if the flight you're looking for is just one leg, you may want to try a round-trip search if you first search one way and get nothing. And vice versa.

mpeterson78

Tried booking a round trip, still no results. I know one-way has worked before, because I remember searching for these flights months ago and seeing the results show up just fine. There's gotta be something wrong with LAN award space just not showing up on any BA system, online or phone. I called BA and they weren't able to see any availability either. What's going on??

sdsearch

Well, as I said in post 3 above (where I explained about Award Nexus), BA is often far from the best way to search any OW availability (ie, its intermittent problems are not limited to LAN). So did you try anything other than BA (such as QF, either through Award Nexus or directly)?

If neither BA nor QF can see it, I'd say it's mostly likely than LAN has not released it. But if QF can see it but BA can't, that would obviously be a BA problem, and it would so not the first time.

rinipiyan

So I guess LAN barely has any award spaces eh? I am looking to fly to Punta Arenas (PUQ) in Jan, the tickets are dry on QF, AA and BA searches. Meh :/

neuromancer

Well, they have award seats for their own program (they vary in price, so if a flight is not full, you can always find an award seat for some ridiculous amount of points/kms). BAEC shows nothing, and it did show a lot of availability for Easter island in November, so the problem comes and goes...

neuromancer

last week I managed to get an award fliht exactly where/when I wanted, flying LATAM with Avios. Checked again this week, nothing available again.

dbasulto

How far in advance?

neuromancer

3-8 days, but there were more seats available later

susiesan

I saw award space for the flight I wanted on the exact day of travel on BA.com, called AA to grab it, and it was a breeze to do. I fed the AAgent the date and flight number and he got it for me. This was at 330 days out, as soon as the flights showed up on BA web site. Seats are there far I advance.

slack455

This isn't for intra south-america flights, but I've seen some weird behavior with LAN awards through OW partners. LAX-LIM for example will never show more than 1 available seat, BUT make that SFO-LIM and as long as there is AA saaver availability for the SFO-LAX leg you'll get 2+ seats available on the same LAX-LIM flight that showed only 1 seat. I noticed similar oddities with MIA/MCO. I've tried calling AA/BA to see what the agent can get and they as well can only see that single seat for booking LAX-LIM

sdsearch

I'm not sure if this is the cause in the specific situation, but there are such things as "married" segments, where availability existing only a combination of flights but not on the individual segments as stand-alone flights, because the airline is interested in promoting travel from A to C (whether via B or not), but does not need to promote travel from A to B or B to C.

But, OTOH, there sometimes is a glitch in airline award searches where if you search A-B-C, and A-B has 3 seats but B-C has 1 (or 0!) seats, if you search as A-B-C, it'll claim 3 seats, but 2 (or all 3!) of those are "phantom" on B-C, and you only get the true award availability results by checking each segment individually.

So it depends on which of these two situations is going on as to whether 3 seats really are available SFO-LAX-LIM or not.