Is Award Availability Allocated to Specific Airlines?
 

I'm trying to book an award and see a particular CX availability on BA's site and via KVS. Alternatively AA tells me there is no availability and the KVS awards/OneWorld also shows no availability.

I've heard phone agents claim award allocation can be toward specific airlines and not the alliance as a whole but it was my belief that those particular flights were being blocked (eg UA and O*A flights a few years back). Is this phantom BA availability?

Is there another explanation?

BA.com is known to show phantom CX award availability. Some airlines do provide additional award inventory to their members but I don't think any oneworld airline provides selective availability to oneworld partners - it is either all or nothing.

KVS takes its availability information from either BA, CX, JL or QF depending on the search method. Awards/OneWorld uses Qantas.com and Awards/BA-OneWorld uses BA.com. So if it is shown on BA.com it should show on KVS Awards/BA-OneWorld, but this may be showing the same phantom availability.

Is Award Availability Allocated to Specific Airlines?
 

What do you mean BA shows phantom availability? CX availability that shows up on BA is confirmable using Avios.

AA is either lagging in syncing up CX award availability (or blocking it from redemption outright).

I mean that BA.com shows availability which is not really there, and if you try to book it through BA.com it will give you an error. There have been occasional reports of this happening with CX and LA award searches on BA.com, as well as issues with married and connecting segments showing the higher availability of the two rather than the lower.

The other explanation is that the AAgent could not find availability that is there. The OP can try the following: http://help.kvstool.com/#AgentSaysNo

I have not seen any reports of oneworld carriers blocking other carrier award inventory, or oneworld carriers only releasing awards selectively to other oneworld carriers.

What are the flight details?

As noted in the KVS Tool User Guide at http://Help.KVSTool.com/#CX:

Are you trying to use AA miles?
This appears to be the problem discussed in this thread on the AA forum:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...ut-not-aa.html

When searching ba.com for reward flights on CX that involve connecting flights (for example, TPE-HKG-LHR) ba.com often displays the availability for the short haul flight (usually greater) as also being available for the long haul flight (usually less). When you try to book it fails. If you search for the two flights individually you often discover the true availability for the long haul sector and that ba.com is displaying the availability for the short haul as also being available for the long haul sector.

Thanks - I only search segment by segment never a connection so I don't think there a phantom issue.

I'd prefer not to announce that as it's during a period where availability is not great. ;)

Trying to use AA miles as I just need a o/w flight. And I'm simply trying to ascertain TPAC availabilty, haven't looked at any connecting flights.

It appears that JL is also showing the flight in question, CX 888. So now I'm left wondering if there's something about the one stop flight that's causing problems.

Edit: And the answer is no. Got a competent agent who easily found the flight in question.

Sounds right -- if you see CX Award Availability via the [Awards/JL-OneWorld] Method in the KVS Tool, it can definitely be booked by a [competent] AA Agent.