There have been a few reports lately that people are having trouble finding American Airlines awards through Qantas. I came across a post on Flyertalk about the situation and I thought I’d investigate it a little further.

Here’s an example routing from Los Angeles to San Francisco:

As you can see, there looks to availability on American right?

Nope, all dates there wasn’t one seat showing. Now, this isn’t just AA being AA and not releasing space.

Expertflyer confirmed that there is definitely seats available but nothing was showing on the Qantas side of things, hmmm.

So after not finding any space on the website, I decided to call the Platinum line and enquire as to why this is happening and is this just an online problem.

An agent confirmed that there is an error in the system and it’s currently being worked on but there isn’t an exact time of when the problem will be fixed. 

Almost all American awards are unable to be booked online, you’ll get a continuous error. 

Some British Airways awards are available to be booked online but it’s hit and miss depending on routing from what I’ve found. 

British Airways First Class

Qantas are waiving all the booking fee’s when you book over the phone which replicates booking online.