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I was doing some research for another blog post I have in mind and I came across a discrepancy between the British Airways website and Iberia’s website when it comes to Business Class award availability. Phantom award availability isn’t a new thing and most airlines’ websites suffer from it to one degree or another but I was curious to see if that’s what this was or if it was something else.
The flight I was looking at was a Business Class reward flight from Madrid to Miami in January 2017….
…and I was looking to compare what British Airways was charging for the same award….but on BA.com this is what I saw:
So I found another date on which Iberia was showing Business Class award availability (this time the Iberia site was showing availability for two different flights on the same day)……
….and compared it to what British Airways was displaying on their site:
I wasn’t sure what to make of this so I decided to take a look at what Qantas’ website was showing for the same dates:
Qantas didn’t show availability either!
I checked dates in the other direction too and found a similar issue…so it wasn’t just flights out of Madrid that weren’t showing up.
At this point I was reasonably sure that this was an Iberia issue – I could easily believe that BA.com was being useless but I felt it was unlikely that both BA and Qantas were begin useless at the same time.
I had a little bit of an issue here because I don’t have enough Avios in my Iberia Plus account to book an award so I couldn’t get past the screen that priced up the flights but then told me that I was short of the number of Avios needed to book. I could have combined some Avios from my British Airways account if I really wanted to (I didn’t) but I decided to call Iberia up to see if they could see the same availability.
After a ridiculous amount of time on hold (39 minutes!) and some truly terrible music (the Spanish have some fantastic music so where do they get this stuff from?!) I got hold of an agent who, while a little bit slow on the uptake, ended up confirming that the Iberia Award seats were available.
I was tempted to call back to check one more time just to be sure (agents aren’t always reliable) but I couldn’t face another 30+ minutes on hold with that music….so I have to assume that the Iberia website is correct.
That being the case it’s something really worth remembering. I suspect that most Avios users go to British Airways’ website to search for availability assuming it’s going to be accurate…but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Bottom Line
I went back to the Iberia website and found a total of 7 dates on which there was Business Class availability showing on Iberia’s website while both British Airways and Qantas showed none. I probably could have found more but, to be honest, looking for award availability isn’t exactly interesting, especially when you don’t actually plan to book it, and I felt I’d proved my point!
Moral of the story: If you’re looking for Avios availability on Iberia don’t always assume that a lack of availability on BA.com (or on Qantas.com) is the end of the story…there’s an outside chance that, like in this case, there’s a glitch and availability is actually there.
