Booking Mendoza on BA: Try Try Again, Then Pick Different Dates
Head’s up for those using Avios miles. Last month, the British Airways award reservation system had an ongoing glitch. Now at least you can know it’s them, not you.
Booking my flights to Mendoza was a several week process. After picking my ideal dates, I pulled up the BA website in the off chance my flights were bookable online, although I assumed I’d soon be talking to an agent.
8 seats were showing on Business LAN for my desired date and time! I went through the entire process, entering in all my information, and when I reached the payment page, was informed that all seats had sold out during the booking process. I found it hard to believe that there would be a run on that particular flight to Santiago, so I called.
The agent was finding seats on the earlier flight, but showing no availability on the one I wanted. Even asking her to request the particular flight manually yielded no results. Other airlines were showing award seats available on that flight. So, I decided to wait a little while to see if they’d fix the glitch.
Checked online multiple times over 2-3 weeks, same problem. Finally broke down and called again and got an amazing agent. He was upfront about the problems and willingly checked flight after flight from various departure cities to see if we could get my dates. Still no dice, but using 100,000 Avios miles to fly LAN business class seemed like it was better value than using 135,000 AAdvantage miles for American Airline First. So I wound up booking tickets the same day, but on the earlier, daytime flight.
It means two en-route overnights, but then again, leaving several days before I wanted would cost me several nights as well.
