I am trying to book a getaway for my wife and I to somewhere warm over Thanksgiving. As you can imagine, even with miles and points, this is proving to be a challenging endeavor to do in anything resembling a cost-effective manner. Actually I’m able to find some decent prices for the outbound flight on either Wednesday or leaving Thanksgiving morning, it’s just impossible to find anything returning back on Sunday
Is it better option 1….
or option 2…
(SEE ALSO: Which of these Southwest Airlines routings is most ridiculous)
I get it… I get it… I’m trying to fly somewhere that everyone wants to be when everyone wants to be there. It’s the Traveler’s Triangle all over again!
Finding a low-price jackpot?
But then I found some interesting prices over at Google Flights
(SEE ALSO: 6 reasons Google Flights is the best search engine)
Doing a multi-city search and flying from Cancun to Charlotte on Sunday the 25th, and then stopping over in Charlotte overnight before continuing to Indianapolis on Monday morning
$306 is certainly not CHEAP for a one-way, but it’s half the price of other flights, and compared even to award tickets it’s a pretty good price. Especially considering the fact that the taxes and fees that you get departing Mexico (which are not insubstantial) are baked into the price of the ticket, instead of being added on to an award redemption
Possibly making things even better would be combining this with some low-level award availability on Sunday night from Charlotte back to Cincinnati, which might make a throwaway scenario possibly worthwhile.
Viewing the flights on AA.com
So is this phantom Google space? Well, I can see the flights on aa.com just fine.
And actually, when they price out in pesos, it’s slightly cheaper
But when you put in your passengers, you get an error message
and it kicks you back to the fare screen. I tried in many different browsers, computers – basically everything I could think of. It was frustrating to have it to tell me that at least one of my flights or fares was not available, only to have it take me LITERALLY RIGHT BACK TO THE SAME SCREEN WHERE IT SHOWED THESE SO-CALLED “NOT AVAILABLE” FLIGHTS!
Trying to get help from American
I tried this for a few days with no success before reaching out to American. First of all, I tried tweeting to them. They were no help, so I called into the AA reservation desk. After looking into it for a bit, the agent said that the $312 fare was not “in the system” – that the price in the system was $678. I asked why it kept showing up as $312 on the site, and she referred me to AA.com web support. I transferred myself over there and after another 30 minute hold, the agent confirmed that the price was $678 and had no answers as to why the website was showing the wrong fare
I still don’t understand how or why American is showing these fares on their website without allowing them to be booked, and it feels on the verge of even being illegal but what do I know. I get when there is “phantom space” on partner awards, but this is an AA flight showing up on AA.com
Until then… I will keep on the lookout. If you can find any good deals on a Thanksgiving trip somewhere warm, hit me up!
Have you ever dealt with an airline showing unbookable fares on their own site? Share your experience in the comments!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Looks like there is a lawsuit about this.
https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/845992-american-airlines-class-action-says-ticket-prices-bait-switch/
Hmm I don’t think that’s quite the same thing? Maybe?
American Airlines – Going for Great
The exact same thing happened to me when attempted to book at flight to Japan over New Year’s. Price would show on the AA website, but were not bookable. Same message as you how in your screen shot.
I went through the same exercise as you – called, on hold, eventually got transferred to web support. However, in my case, they actually honored the ticket price I could see on the screen. Go figure.
cancun, hurricane season, this. no thanks
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I’ve seen this happen on AA.com before when there was only 1 ticket at the low fare. If there’s only 1 ticket and you want more than 1, it bumps all of your seats up to the next highest fare bracket that has sufficient qty to cover your seats. Most recently it happened in May when I was booking a trip to Hong Kong. Try booking each person separately and see if one gets the lower fare.
Thanks for the advice Tommy – unfortunately, the same thing happens even if I try to book just 1 passenger
I have this happen to me ALL the time on AA. It’s like a teaser price that doesn’t exist and they hope you’ll book the higher fares
I know! It’s so frustrating and feels kind of illegal-y to me
Every single time I’ve tried to use Expedia (or all of it’s fake competitors that are actually owned by them), I have the same experience. I’ve lost hours chasing fake low fairs that don’t exist.
I think this is an illegal bait and switch tactic. Once they have you on the phone they say the prices have gone up by hundreds of dollars and try to get you to book those instead. Yet the cheap fake fares show for days later.
It’s either a poorly built site they don’t bother to fix, or worse, an intentional tactic.