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This morning I asked “Is BA unable to see American Airlines award space?” I had found an AA saver award that I wanted to book. And I knew space was available. Iberia.com and Qantas.com could see the space. But I wanted to book with British Airways Avios, and BA.com could not see the award space. A telephone agent couldn’t see the award space either even though she checked two different systems. Her advice was to try, try, try again.
Guess what? She was right.
In the comments of my post, Susan wrote:
What worked when I had this issue was clicking on other days of the week calendar that come up and then coming back to the day I actually wanted. The refreshed query without leaving the page brought it up after the third or fourth try. Did this trick a few times on multiple occasions with success. Hope it helps others.
So, I gave it a try. It didn’t work. I tried about 20 times in different ways. No luck. But Nick Reyes tried it too and it worked for him. So I tried again. Bingo! This time, the award space showed up immediately when I ran the search. But when I switched days and returned to the original day, the award space was gone. So I switched days forward and back over and over until the space showed up again. Eventually it did.
It’s clear to me that Susan’s approach is simply an easy way to force BA to run the same search over and over. It’s like rolling dice. Roll a 7 or 11 and you win!
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[…] sometimes doesn’t show American Airlines availability when flights are indeed available. See this post for tips on how to make it work, though in this case I couldn’t get British Airways to show […]
[…] Note: It can be difficult to find American Airlines Saver level awards, which are the seats you can book with British Airways Avios points. In the past, I’ve found Saver level awards on the American Airlines site, but couldn’t get them to appear on the British Airways site. Lots of folks have had a similar problem. If you find yourself in that situation, try this trick Greg from The Frequent Miler details here. […]
[…] You can refresh the British Airways search endlessly. (HT: Frequent Miler) […]
I helped some family do this and after many tries it worked two days ago. Then yesterday for the last ticket, when trying to pay with a credit card, the screen would just go back to the first page so I couldn’t pay and this happened twice. Tried again later and could pay the taxes and get the ticket using paypal to pay since the credit card kept throwing us out.
[…] Finding American Award Space on British Airways […]
[…] How to Find AA Award Space on BA: If you’re wanting to fly on American Airlines metal by booking your award seat with Avios, then you’ll want to read this. Basically the moral of the story is, if at first you don’t succeed, then try, try again! […]
Worked for me today…..after many tries. Thank you so much. I would have given up in frustration and used AA miles.
[…] case you were wondering…How to Find AA Awards Space on BA.com. Keep trying, it will eventually […]
[…] How to find AA award space on BA.com by Frequent Miler. This is a really frustrating situation, and I can’t believe Avios […]
It does not work…never does. Avoid BA at all costs!
Thank you. This was very helpful. I was trying to book using BA Avios as well. Award seats showed up on my initial search and then I could never find them again. I even tried changing days but still no availability. Just need to stay persistent.
Glad to see this documented after trying and trying again in the past and hit or miss. I’ve never seen three connecting flights though on BA, even when it shows up as fully available on AA
I’m imagining some noob in the future googling how to book AA award space on BA, finding this article because of the headline, and being *really* confused but making this his primary method for finding AA space.
Having the same issue here and tried and tried but no luck… will keep trying.
Careful with the validation! That’s a prelude to getting locked out of searches for several days.