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Hi All, BA appear to have updated their app so you can no longer search for reward flights by country or continent (only be specific airport/ city). It looks as though they have also removed many reward seats with the update too. Has anyone else experienced this? Thanks.
Yes, all first class seems to have been removed on LON-JNB. Strange – I was hoping it was just an app glitch but nothing on BA website either. I do think the Avios/Reward system has had a revamp as my Barclays Premier Account have confirmed there will be a delay in sending my monthly avios this month.
No First for Mexico City which definitely had availability before the update.
Someone’s posted under one of the articles that on the website award flights are now only bookable 45 days out, though I haven’t actually looked.
Someone’s posted under one of the articles that on the website award flights are now only bookable 45 days out, though I haven’t actually looked.
I don’t believe so as economy, premium and business reward seats available 355 days and under.
There is an IT issue for all flights up to 16 August where none of these can be booked in any class. Not sure post 16 August. Was told the tech team were working on this yesterday and to expect a fix by 7am but it still hasn’t. Called again now and they don’t have any timeframe, was supposed to be flying tomorrow
All kinds of glitches going on. Yesterday could see availability LHR-SYD with 241 in Feb/March but couldn’t select it. Today can see it and select it if booking one way, but it doesn’t show if your query includes a return flight. Give me strength.
And 5 minutes later… “Sorry, there seems to be a technical problem”. All search functionality gone.
I wonder if they’re actually patching / breaking things while the site is live ? Got a glitch where stopover dates weren’t recognised, now that’s fixed again, and have actually managed to book 2xJ LHR-SIN-SYD in Feb with a 3 week stopover.
Final glitch: an hour ago, taxes and fees was quoted as £975.64. Now it’s a round £1,000. For the exact same flights…
There’s definitely strange things going on, SeatSpy isn’t allowing you to search for First availability on routes like New York and Boston, and there doesn’t seem to be any on BA.com either. In contrast lots of J availability opened up to EZE yesterday at the end of the year, which is quite unusual, and I was able to change my reward booking to a date that suited me better, although it took a long time on the phone to process. BA’s website is very hit and miss in being able to search for things though, and more often than not I’m getting an error message.
This is really not great, I was planning to book some flights with avios for the 15th of july and now have to make completly new plans as there are no rewards flight available until mid-August.
Helpfully, I’ve just seen that the app now shows all my bookings not in order of date coming up, but in alphabetical order of booking reference. Great idea.
I think BA probably use some kind of anti-devops software development approach, rolling put bugs on a continuous basis.
How long does this have to continue before we get a HfP article on the pulling of 90% 0f reward flights over summer???
It’s all to do with the removal of Point of Sale rules on fares, which requires every single BA fare combination (which will be millions) to be refiled.
The first attempt to do this over 24th June had to be adandoned part-way through. The attempt on 1st July was the 2nd go.
As usual, it seems that there are a lot of unforseen knock-ons.
We’re now on day 5 with little award availability over summer. Looks like my travel plans this week are out the window. Still surprised how little coverage this is getting on travel blogs like HfP, even if just to say the facts coming straight from BA that this is an IT blunder, currently avios availability up to 15th August is mostly offline and they’re still working on getting avios availability back online asap with no official reports of this being an intentional removal of award availability. Maybe this is just hitting me harder than others personally due to my circumstances? Still, it seems high enough to justify HfP coverage or is there some restriction in place stopping such coverage?
Hi @russellg – would you please stop with unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Also if you’re not happy with the lack of coverage of the issue on this site, then you could get your travel news from another instead.
We’re now on day 5 with little award availability over summer. Looks like my travel plans this week are out the window.
Were you planning on booking something last minute to travel this week, or are you referring to plans to book something this week for later travel?
If the former, don’t leave it to the last minute next time. If the latter, if none of the reward seats of interest are available then no one else can book them either, so they will still be available at some (albeit currently unknown) later point.
Hi @russellg – would you please stop with unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Also if you’re not happy with the lack of coverage of the issue on this site, then you could get your travel news from another instead.
What are you on about conspiracy theories Scott???
We’re now on day 5 with little award availability over summer. Looks like my travel plans this week are out the window.
Were you planning on booking something last minute to travel this week, or are you referring to plans to book something this week for later travel?
If the former, don’t leave it to the last minute next time. If the latter, if none of the reward seats of interest are available then no one else can book them either, so they will still be available at some (albeit currently unknown) later point.
Had to leave til last minute due to not knowing circumstances prior (in this situation, normally book 455 days out). I understand that this is the game we play. I also understand Rob can write whatever he wants. He and his team have literally the best travel site for flight and hotel rewards from the U.K. on the net and it’s not even close. I’m just surprised why we’ve not had any coverage of such a large IT issue that affects exactly what this site primarily targets.
Just an update luckily some seats were released on Thursday night but a very limited handful. It still worked for us as managed to book for the next day and my friend guested us into CCR. The Agent I spoke to on Thursday in the call centre also mentioned they had been frustrated as they knew it was broken but we’re getting a memo from IT that it has been fixed so clearly a Comms issue. Concur it still seems broken for most routes
Still issues – no first availability to JNB and others. Getting a bit ridiculous now
Do we know yet if this is still IT issues or if they’ve genuinely removed a lot of reward seats? I don’t see how or why they’d remove an entire allocation of first class to the likes of MEX and JNB. Doesn’t make any sense.
I’ve seen on other forums that they’re actually stripping Avios rewards seats rather than this being IT problems. Any ideas?
Even by the appalling standards of BA’s IT cretins it’s hard to believe that this is an unfixed bug. The 45-day blackout is moving forward day to day. Currently general availability doesn’t open up until 22/23 August. Before then there are a few scraps of availability, usually on routes with many flights, such as Frankfurt or Amsterdam.
Given BA’s recent track record regarding Avios earning, BAC, tier points, etc, I suspect this just another part of BA’s race to the bottom. A race which BA is certainly winning!!A race which BA is certainly winning!!
Someone hasn’t tried to use Virgin points recently.
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