Advice on booking American Airlines reward flights on BA site

[NickySW12]

I’m trying to book a flight from Bozeman US to London using avios. The BA website shows quite a bit of availability (I’m preferring Bozeman to Chicago, Chicago to Heathrow, both with AA as fewer avios). When I tried to book online it said not possible only at the credit card finalisation page. I have called the Executive club both yesterday and today and they advised no availability for the joint AA flights on the date (27 Aug) and the following day (which does show availability on the website).

I appreciate that sometimes the availability is incorrect but seems odd and frustrating that it is so wrong on so many flights. The flight combo I requested is still showing 7 seats available!

I would welcome any ideas on this eg is it worth holding off booking anything else for a few days in case the BA system does make them bookable? I don’t have any points with American Airlines so can’t do through them.

27 Aug
B 13:45
27 AugBZN
17:45

27 Aug
ORD
American Airlines – AA1501
Non-stop

Economy
20:35
27 AugORD
10:30

28 Aug

LHR
American Airlines – AA0046

Non-stop

Economy

Many thanks
Nicky

[davefl]

This question typically comes up once a month.

Only the lowest priced AA fares come up as partner awards. (They used to be labelled AASaver but not any more which helps noone).

The 14k flight you’re seeing isn’t the lowest for that route. If you look at the 28th there’s one at 8k and that should appear for booking via BA.com. If you can’t push the trip back to the 28th you should be able to do it, otherwise don’t expect any AA flight priced at higher than 8.5k to be available to partners.

This differs from route to route, so you can’t count on the 8.5k number you have to research what is the lowest for a particular one, and it has to be non-stop.

[davefl]

P.S. if you click the calendar button it’ll show you the lowest prices for that month, only the 19th and 28th will be available on ba.com.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

May also be married segment which often only come into play at the last minute one individual flight options have been selected.

[NickySW12]

Thanks for this, very helpful. Is it normal for the flights to show as available on the BA website when in fact they aren’t as not the “lowest” price for that route?!

[NickySW12]

And the calendar page is very helpful thanks!

[davefl]

NickySW12 wrote:

Thanks for this, very helpful. Is it normal for the flights to show as available on the BA website when in fact they aren’t as not the “lowest” price for that route?!

There may well be extra mystery availabilty but that would be down to AA’s revenue management team as there are no rules any more. What I said above are the crowd sourced guidelines for minimum availability.