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Alert! Air France award search glitch – greyed out search function. Need Data Points

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Early this morning I began working on a few award client itineraries and was hoping to utilize Air France’s FlyingBlue program to perform some searches. I just flew Air France business class from Paris to Washington D.C. and had no issues whatsoever with booking, and it’s one of my favorites because it’s a partner of all 4 transferrable currencies ( Chase, Amex, Citi, and Capital One). There have been reports in the past with accounts getting blocked or shut down due to the sole usage of the account award searches, or booking tickets for other people.  I haven’t run into that in the past, but today I logged in and the search function was greyed out.

a screenshot of a flight ticket

Typically this isn’t unusual

I’ve encountered this numerous times, but usually a simple log out and back in resolves the issue. If it presses, you can simply clear your cache, delete cookies, etc and that resolves the issue.

I’ve logged into several accounts and even created a new one – the problem persists.

I thought maybe it was because I had triggered something internally on my account that blocked it. Having tried multiple browsers – Chrome, Firefox, and Safari with no luck. Deleting cookies, clearing cache, and even trying a VPN to log in – I was till blocked.

I then started trying other accounts that I manage or maintain and all of them were greyed out. I even created a brand new account to see if the search function would work.

It looks like some users are reporting the issue on Flyertalk as well

Are you guys experiencing similar problems, or is this a targeted issue? Let’s get figure out what’s going on, or build critical mass to get Air France to resolve the issue.

In the past, AF has made comments that allude to the fact that they kinda/sorta want to dissuade people from utilizing the program purely to transfer in points from partners. Their method has historically been to either shut down accounts that do so…or grey them out. WHAT?! I know…ridiculous.

Let’s hope this is a greater AF problem, much like the calendar function being removed last year, and it’ll be fixed sooner than later, and not targeted which inevitably means we’ll all end up on the short end of the stick at some point.

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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11 Comments

  • Danielle January 23, 2019

    I experienced this grayed-out award search issue over the weekend, and am still experiencing it this morning. I have 0 miles and have only ever used the site to search award availability, since I have transferable miles through partners. I tried to email them, but no response.

  • Matt January 21, 2019

    I have this problem as well. It’s been eight days since first reported– is there any more news about what is causing it?

    • Miles January 21, 2019

      Matt – some are reporting it only glitching on weekends with no points…mine greyed out again, but has since come back

  • beachmouse January 13, 2019

    A while back, someone on FT suggested trying to search/book on the Air France app when the AF web page search didn’t seem to be working right, and when I tried the AF earlier today, it was letting me search award tickets as well as it ever does. (ie. not great but vaguely functional)

  • VR January 13, 2019

    Seeing the same problem. It worked as of Friday night for sure. And not working now (grayed out boxes). I do not have much activity on AF at all (just transferred points from Amex last July and booked 1 ticket). That is it… Also did some search last Friday – one route nothing unusual… Hopefully just a system issue.

  • Yev January 13, 2019

    It started last night (Sat). I’ve been using the search page A LOT, but the issue just started yesterday. Hopefully it’s resolved soon.

  • Miles Husband January 13, 2019

    Shared award engine with KLM is also throwing an error via KLM.com ” Buy a ticket with miles” entry point. Strongly suggests AF award web server down for maintenance

  • GRD January 13, 2019

    I have trouble with the graying out if I am switching back between paid flights and miles flights usually to see seating charts. This is one the Air France page. I log out and log back solves this problem. More annoying is the Captiva that won’t work even if you select all the blocks that have say cars. The vision impair audio option sometimes won’t work.

  • Chris January 13, 2019

    No luck for me on the KLM site as of last night. Still no luck this morning.

  • Miles Husband January 13, 2019

    Worked fine as late as Friday of this week.. Same issues as you today. My suspicion is weekend site maintenance. However, since rev search features working, could be a sinister no-notice devaluation

    • AW January 19, 2019

      Same issue & just transferred miles the other day…was working fine before. Can’t get anyone on the phone. If this isn’t fixed by Monday I’m getting the banks involved. This is straight up fraud if they do not let you book award travel by transferring points…and they’re a partner of every bank.

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