Phantom Award Space

Few terms can spook novice travelers more than “phantom award space”. This term gets thrown around quite a bit whenever someone runs into trouble with an award booking. This can also cause folks to hesitate to transfer their points to a partner airline and complete a booking. But we're here to help alleviate those fears. In this post, we explain what is phantom award space, why it's not as big of a deal as it may seem, and how to troubleshoot it.

What Is Phantom Award Space?

Generally, phantom award space is when an airline's website shows partner availability but when you try to book that flight, the flight cannot be booked.

This is disappointing for two main reasons. First, you don't get to book the flight you found. But also, if you were planning to use transferable points to book that flight, you might have transferred those points from your credit card to the partner airline and now those points will be stuck there because the award space wasn't real. (Remember, points transferred from banks are one-way only.)

Now that we understand phantom award space, the question becomes: is phantom availability a big deal? Not really, actually.

The old adage is that news travels fast, but bad news travels faster. The same applies to phantom award space. For every post we see on our Facebook group asking about phantom space, there are dozens of instances of successfully booking award flights without issue.

Folks are much more likely to post asking for help if they run into trouble than if they make an award booking without issues. This causes phantom awards to look like a much bigger issue than it is.

Just because an award flight isn't bookable doesn't mean it's phantom

Sometimes, we can run into difficulties booking award flight, but that doesn't mean it's because of phantom availability. For example, if you find award space on the operating airline's website but not with any partners, that's not phantom. You just found non-saver awards.

Also, sometimes award space might show across multiple partners but you can't book the flight with that specific program. This is likely due to some technological hiccup involving operating airline, the partner airline, or both.

How to Troubleshoot Phantom Award Space

Even though phantom awards don't happen as often as we might think, it's good to know how to avoid it. So here are some our tips for troubleshooting phantom award space.

Try to proceed with booking as far as you can

An easy way to test for phantom availability is by trying to click through the award space and go as far as you can through the booking process. If you already have enough miles with the loyalty program showing the space, you should be able to get all the way through the payment page where you would need to provide your credit card information.

If you don't have enough miles to cover the flight, you can still try to click through as far as you can without transferring any points. How far you can go will vary depending on the loyalty program you're working with.

Check with other partners

If you find award space with the partner you want to book, try to find that same flight with at least one other partner. The keyword here is partner.

For example, if I find award availability with Air Canada Aeroplan for a flight operated by United, I will try to find award space through avianca lifemiles or another Star Alliance member. I would not bother checking with United here because United is the operating carrier and operating carriers can make awards available for their own loyalty program without making it available to partner airlines.

If you find award space with at least one other partner, you can be pretty confident that the space you have found is real and bookable. But if you cannot find award space with a single other partner, then it is quite likely that you have run into phantom availability.

What can make this trick a little challenging is that some airlines are better at showing award availability on some partner than others. For example, Air Canada Aeroplan shows more award availability with Singapore Airlines and Air India than United Airlines or avianca lifemiles.

Should you call the airline?

The decision on whether to call the airline to confirm availability boils down to how much you value your time. If you find award space with at least two partner airlines, I would not bother calling to confirm availability. Again, phantom space is not that common.

Also note that calling the airline is by no means foolproof. The quality of call center agents varies greatly from airline to airline, and even within an airline's staff. Not every call center is full of knowledgeable and helpful reps like Virgin Atlantic's (we're looking at you, Turkish). When it comes to award bookings with partner airlines, some agents just aren't very informed.

So if you want an extra layer of certainty, feel free to call the partner airline you're searching with. But keep in mind that you might still not receive a definitive (or correct) answer and it is usually overkill and unnecessary.

Issues Booking Flights With Miles: ToP Thoughts

It can sure be disappointing to run into phantom award space. But phantom availability just isn't that common to begin with. But with the tips we shared above, you should be able to test for phantom availability with greater certainty so that you don't transfer your points in vain.

How do you troubleshoot for phantom award space? Come share your thoughts in our Facebook group!