Maybe someone has a good tip to offer here. I have a complex OW award that includes the segment Cusco - Lima (guess where we are visiting).

The only flight for which award seats were loaded to AA, the airline from which I booked the award, were the last flight of the day (LP38). Cusco is notorious for weather issues in the afternoon that cause cancellations of flights. My connections homeward are that same evening from Lima, which would multiply the consequences of any cancellation. LP has at least six other flights that occur earlier in the day, any of which would increase my comfort as there would remain a later flight such as 38 as a fallback. However, no inventory was available on any of those flights and none is found any time I call AA to check.

Expertflyer does not have access to the hidden bucket code T that is used for award trips.

A tip I found elsewhere suggested that I could use the LAN web site, after registering, to check for award seat availability. I did that and it seemed that most of the earlier flights still had seats open for awards, yet when I immediately called AA they found zero inventory.

It seems, based on this, that LAN does not make all award inventory available to the OW partners, or at least not to AA. That leaves me once again unable to watch for or set up an alert of any kind for when or if those seats are gifted by LP to OW travelers.

With AA metal, the EXP line can at least send a request to RM to consider opening inventory, but they are not able to do so with partners in OW.

Anyone have a technique that works, outside of simply pestering the EXP line every few days between now and July 1 when the flight takes place?

In my experience, the LAN website availability has always matched what AA available for awards, but I've never done it that far in advance.

What has been reported here before, is having the AA to LAN link "down" for a few days, and that apparently causes the AA agents to see no LAN availability where there should be. Sorry I can't find the thread right now, but basically, just keep trying with the AA agents and maybe ask if they see any availability on LAN at all.

thank you. I know I had that problem booking one LAN segment, where the availability did not show on the -330 date when I expected some. took two extra days then it popped up. perhaps that was the link you mentioned causing the problem.

I will keep at it

But is that likely to be the problem here? After all, you say they DO see availability for the day you want, albeit for one flight only.

I would pick a few days in Apr/May (as a test only) and look for 2 or more award seats on lan.com, and with that information call the EXP line. If they again see only the last flight of the day as available I would know the problem lies elsewhere, and would try to persuade the EXP desk into looking further as to WHY only that flight shows as available. AA cannot contact LP's RM but they can contact (by phone, if you push them) a OW liason person who can in turn provide, hopefully, some answers.

Did you already try the QF site?

No, it could be, because they had the availability months ago when I booked, but only for the last flight. At this point they see NO availability on July 1 from Cusco to Lima. I asked several times and they all asserted that the airline chooses which award seats to hand over for AA booking, which they are not permitted to question.

I haven't, but if the issue is that the inventory for awards is different for the airline's home passengers than the inventory they hand over to AA, then I am not sure how it would help, unless all partners get the same pooled quantity.

I will try, in case they offer the same subset of inventory to all OW partners and thus QF would see the same as AA.

Unfortunately both Lima and Cusco are not listed on the drop down on the QF site.

They always tell you that, but I haven't personally seen that in practice within oneworld.

A few weeks ago I had found availability for an Iberia flight on their site, and called AA to book. From the moment I asked about a oneworld award, I knew the agent was going to be less than helpful (she said "sorry, but those are to travel around the world only"). She said there was no availability on Iberia at all, and when I said I could see it on their website she used that same line ("each airline makes different inventory available to each partner"). I thanked her, hung up, called right back and got the seats.

Same here. Had to call AA three times before I finally got IB award availability that was there all the time, only agents 1 and 2 could not see, for some reason. Now I am fighting the hopeless, losing "battle of the IB seat assignment", but that's another story.

We've all had those agents - the solution is exactly as you executed, hang up and get to an agent with a clue.

I haven't been dealing with the dolts but I guess it is possible that I have gotten a dozen bad agents in a row (but not that likely). I will try again and again of course, until I prevail.

Interesting that you mentioned that. I have noticed one pattern on 3 AA award reservations involving IB business class with disappearing seat assignments... maybe it's just a coincidence and I am reading too much into it, but at least in those 3 examples, the seats stayed on odd segments and dissapeared in even segments.

For example, one was
1 IB Europe-MAD (seat assigned ok)
2 IB MAD-South America
3 LP
...

another one
1 AA
2 BA
3 IB Europe-MAD (seat assigned ok)
4 IB MAD-South America
5 LP
...

another one
1 USA-MAD (seat assigned ok)
2 MAD-Europe
3 AA
...

At first I thought that they could only assign seats on the short segments, but not on the transatlantic ones, but the last reservation shot down that theory. Then I thought about the even/odd segments. It makes absolutely no sense to me, but maybe there is a pattern?

None. Iberia giveth, Iberia taketh away.

just got on LAN web site, requested award availabiliy Cusco to Lima for 3 passengers, came up with four flights stating definite avialability -- LP20, 22, 24 and 26. Called EXP desk, no availability shows.

Agent tried to get it pursued, but after a while hold, she came back and said that she HAD to book it thru the direct link and therefore her hands were tied. I tried asking about OW liason that I could talk to or mail, but got nowhere. The agent saw one flight on the next day open, so the link is working, just to eliminate that cause from the list of explanations.

Seems to me that LAN does not offer all inventory to OW, keeps some for its own FFs. Maybe when every non-status and premium FF is done, there might be a seat left for an Emerald from another airline, but I will have to brute force call incessantly since we haven't found any system that will spot availability.

If you don't triumph over AA here is a wild, insane, thought: ticket whatever LP flight you can, then call LA (shudder) and try to get the booking changed to an earlier flight.