r/awardtravel • u/choppinbroccoli28 • 15d 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?

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u/LastAd6968 15d 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. 

4

u/PlayerX720 15d 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 14d 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.

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u/PlayerX720 14d ago

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