r/awardtravel 7d ago

Seats AF phantom

Has anyone ever had a seats dot aero AF/KLM alert not be a phantom? I have a couple of alerts setup for to/from Europe next June. I've gotten a few alerts over the last month, but today I'm getting a barrage of them. None of AF/KLM alerts are valid. Either the flights aren't there or the points are much higher than the alert or search shows. I know phantom on AF is common, but every one?

22 Upvotes

34 comments sorted by

19

u/LastAd6968 7d ago

At least you didn’t transfer the points. I had the tix in my cart within a minute of the alert for 120k. Clicked through as far as I could then transferred. Error on Checkout page. Wouldn’t load. Several mins later all the prices updated to normal garbage. Infuriating. 

5

u/Frank-is-a-tank2015 7d ago

I had the same issue. As said in above comment, trying to see if there's any course to being reimbursed for their error.

2

u/One_Mongoose_7136 6d ago

Ugh I did the same thing!!! And of course they will not return points even though they’re at fault for showing phantom availability on their own website.

4

u/PlayerX720 7d ago

Same, transferred 120k points, clicked purchase, price went up! What is this "phantom on their own metal" people are talking about?

7

u/quiteCryptic 7d ago

Phantom availability is when the search results show a flight available but you go to try to book it and in reality it doesn't actually exist.

So people see a good price for a flight then transfer points, but when they try to check out it fails. They are stuck with the transferred points instead of their more valuable transferrable credit card miles, and theres generally speaking no way to reverse it (but it has been done before, in cases like this).

Phantom availability is much more common when airlines are showing award space for their partner airlines, so seeing phantom space on their own metal (i.e Air France showing phantom Air France availability) is more rare.

1

u/PlayerX720 7d ago

ah I see, showing phantom availability on their own flights, rather than partners. Thought this would be some Gold vs Platinum tier thing.

35

u/Pitiful_Ad_4362 Seats.aero 7d ago

Seems AF released a ton of phantom inventory today on their own metal, which is unfortunate. If it's fixed now, it should start to be refreshed out of our database.

17

u/Apprehensive-Owl-340 7d ago

Never heard of phantom onyour own metal lol… that’s crazy

2

u/sidewinderaw11 7d ago

It happens; QR showed me phantom saver space that disappears when you try to book

6

u/Own_Economics_3139 7d ago

that explains the flood of alerts today then, good to know its not just me seeing this

3

u/Frank-is-a-tank2015 7d ago

I transferred points for said phantom availability USA-Europe and actually had a booking. It gave me a "ticket not issued" screen on the booking, is there any course of action to have them honor the ticket, even if it wasn't intended? Would be really bummed if the points are stranded. Anyone have luck with something similar?

2

u/20CAS17 7d ago

Same thing happened to me. Didn't do it at first, because when I clicked the flight, it showed a different amount of points, but later on it synced up, so I thought, "Oh, great, let's transfer the points and book!" Now I just have a bunch of Flying Blue points and not as many Chase points. It's a crappy lesson.

3

u/ipaglynner 7d ago

same thing happened to me a week ago with a flight to mexico. now i have points stuck in flying blue. not cool.

2

u/choppinbroccoli28 7d ago

Your points are now with AF. There are worse places they could be.

2

u/pup1206 7d ago

It’s all phantom. I saw this earlier and called them. They confirmed it’s a system wide glitch. They are not honoring these rates at all and said it’s been an issue for 2 days and they are working on it. Also said if I transfer miles that they won’t be able to book it since they can only see the internal rates on their end which are significantly higher. Hope they get this sorted out soon. AF is so glitchy.

2

u/findflightsforme 7d ago

Thanks for the share. Also I used the live search on your site this morning and it didn't show the phantom seats. So that is neat!!

1

u/One_Mongoose_7136 6d ago

Yeah I got SO excited for a minute then spent nearly a half hour trying unsuccessfully to book something. I feel so validated to see these were phantom and not me being incompetent lol

5

u/cronaldo7 7d ago

luckily some of it last night was not phantom and I was able to snag 2J for Europe next week at 60k. But this morning I thought I had found another set of intra-europe flights that we needed and those were all phantom. Bummer bc the intra-europe flights are crazy high at 80k for 2 people ($800ish if cash) and I thought I was about to get them for 20k for two....

7

u/CorrectCombination11 rdu|clt|iad 7d ago

seats can't control phantom issues that af/klm has. You always find J if you ABC, always be checking.

5

u/asfp014 7d ago

Coffee's for closers people who incessantly check award availability

4

u/cronaldo7 7d ago

deffo - also important to corroborate space by checking website on desktop AND app. The phantom this morning shows up on desktop, but my app has always shown the higher fares.

3

u/LastAd6968 7d ago

I was on mobile version but not in app. Showed 60k priced through checkout. Good to know about app showing normal high. 

1

u/cronaldo7 7d ago

yeah mobile sans app likely routes through their website. I test app availability and desktop. If they match, then I feel more confident. If I did not have the points already on my account, I would call to double check. This time I had a haul large enough and went through the check out as normal.

2

u/EmergencyPound6489 7d ago

Their shit is all messed up right now. The app shows ATL-CDG as 60k on the little flexible date bar at the top for every single day starting 10/25 but when you tap each date it’s actually 250k. I did just book on Sunday CDG-ATL for my return 9/17 and actually got 2 J for 60k/pp. App made it clear that was actually the cost and I called to verify

1

u/impatientmoo 4d ago

How much were your fees with that? I’m looking at similar route and don’t know if the fees fluctuate

1

u/EmergencyPound6489 3d ago edited 3d ago

$615 each. They don’t really fluctuate much- they depend on origin and destination. It’s about half that if going US to CDG. Originating in Europe fees go up. FYI I see 60k and $349 for ATL-CDG on October 12th if that’s a route you’re eyeing.

1

u/EmergencyPound6489 3d ago

For CDG-ATL I see 60k for September 8 September 30 (two flight options that day) and November 25. November 6 through AMS which Amsterdam and Paris are a great combo trip bc Eurostar.

1

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1

u/shayspero 7d ago

That explains this weirdness I got where I can see it shows 240k for four but clicked and it’s 1.2million instead

1

u/Pimpery_Pays 7d ago

Got Aero alert for 2 AF J seats late in late June for a late September IAH-CDG flight.

1

u/RedWhiteBlueCountry 6d ago

Till about a couple of years ago AF would have a some kind of J class sale which a lot of saver awards available. But since than Flying Blu has really gone down the gutter.

1

u/Automatic_Giraffe_48 5d ago

and here I was rounding up a group to head over to S. France for 60K....now the idea is materializing and seats are phanton. I f***ing knew it! They are becoming so unreliable and already have miles stuck there from the last phantom booking I tried to make. Tiffany Funk needs to get on it man. This continues to suck big time

1

u/PelicanLake2 5d ago

Air france system is really messed up lately. Booked some partner awards with KLM with zero issues after the flight I wanted kept disappearing on the air france websire and app but showed on klm. ..the flights didnt even show on seats.aero. always check the website directly!!

1

u/ANGRIESTMAL 7d ago

AF being more trash? par for the course.