American Airlines Website Full of “Phantom” Malaysia Airlines Awards

Malaysia Airlines A330 takes off from Narita Airport
The American Airlines website is showing lots of Malaysia Airlines award availability that doesn’t exist. Photo: Masakatsu Ukon via Wikimedia Commons.

If you’ve recently searched for AAdvantage award seats on the American Airlines website, you may have noticed that there are lots of Economy and Business Class award seats showing as available on Malaysia Airlines flights to & from Australia.

Malaysia Airlines is a Oneworld partner of both American Airlines and Qantas. So, this may give you the impression that there are lots of Malaysia Airlines seats available to book using either American Airlines AAdvantage miles or Qantas Frequent Flyer points. Sadly, some of this is too good to be true.

Malaysia Airlines does often have reasonable award availability on its flights from Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to Kuala Lumpur. On some flights, if booking far enough in advance, you can get up to 2 Business Class award seats using points or miles with any Oneworld airline – including Qantas points. But the wide-open Malaysia Airlines award availability shown on the American Airlines website is sadly not real.

Let’s look at an example. If we search for award availability from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur on the Qantas website for July 2022 – a peak travel period with extremely limited award availability – very few seats appear to be available:

Qantas award availability calendar showing SYD-KUL seats in July 2022
Qantas award availability calendar showing SYD-KUL seats in July 2022.

But if we do the same search on the American Airlines website, there appears to be a lot more award availability:

AA availability calendar SYD-KUL
The American Airlines website shows much more availability than Qantas…

If we then click on a specific date, the American Airlines website shows multiple Malaysia Airlines flights with award seats apparently available.

After clicking through, you can see several Malaysia Airlines flights available
After clicking through, you can see several Malaysia Airlines flights available.

After clicking on one of these options, you’ll be taken to a page showing the full flight details and a breakdown of the cost.

MH award seat on AA website
You can even click through to the next page to see an overview of the flight details and the cost…

But if you try to continue to the next page to complete the payment for this flight, you’ll be redirected back to the flight results page. This error message will also appear at the top of the screen:

MH flight not available
But if you try to continue, you’ll get an error message if it’s phantom award availability.

This is because this particular Malaysia Airlines “availability” shown on the American Airlines website was unfortunately just “phantom” space that doesn’t really exist. It’s displayed by mistake when you search for award flights, and is not actually bookable.

Not all Malaysia Airlines award availability on the American Airlines website is phantom. Some flights are actually available for booking using AAdvantage miles – but many are not. This is a known bug with the American Airlines website that has already been an issue for at least several months.

If in doubt, you can cross-check award availability by searching for Oneworld Award availability on the Japan Airlines website. (You’ll need to create a free JAL Mileage Bank account to search for award availability.) If the Japan Airlines website shows that an award seat/s is available on Malaysia Airlines, it should also be possible to book this using Qantas points, AAdvantage miles or any other Oneworld frequent flyer program’s currency.

 

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Found reward seats on AA website but not showing on QF website

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
________________________

Related Articles

Community Comments

Loading new replies...

Could be 1 of two reasons:

1. MH (together with AY and others) is reknowned for J rewards not appearing on QFF
2. It could be a genuine mismatch between what MH is making available to AA compared with other OW partners

Hate to say it, but I think you may need to call QFF and get a definitive answer. If its a case of 1. there should not be an assistance fee charged.

Regards,

BD

Reply Like

The Malaysia Airlines availability showing on the American Airlines website is phantom. It's not really there and you wouldn't actually be able to book on the AA website - you'll get an error message at some point.

Don't bother calling Qantas, they won't have access to the seats. This has been a known issue with MH availability on the AA website for months, sadly.

Reply 6 Likes

23DEC seems awefully unusual to get availability tbh

the other thing to try if it is not phantom is to try multi-city on QF booking site - ie SYD-KUL(if you're seeing out of SYD obviously) then KUL-DEL

see if you get any joy there.

Reply Like

Do all One World airlines have access to the same flights or could i call Qantas and ask them to search?
Will be using QF points
Thanks in advance Dave

I queried Qantas about a similar scenario some time back... I was told each airline allocates 'x' number of seats at each price point/class/award and that whilst it may show available thru the other carrier if it doesn't show available they would not allow me to book via Qantas with QFF points.
Kinda annoying.

Reply Like

Agreed about phantom availability. It's not bookable (tried SIN-KUL-SYD) without luck

Reply Like

This has been quite a common issue in recent months, so I've written an article explaining what's going on with Malaysia Airlines award space on the American Airlines website.

This is an issue with the American Airlines website and doesn't have anything to do with Qantas. The Qantas website should be displaying accurate MH availability.

Reply Like

click to expand...

seems to have gotten worse, can't even get any results to return when searching for flights from MEL -> KUL (MAS)

Same issue seems to happen for MEL -> NRT (JAL) flights :(

Reply Like