Phantom award space: What it is and how to avoid it

Imagine you set an award alert months ago for a flight you want to book. Your award alert finally pinged, so you searched, saw the award space and transferred rewards to book the award. But when you reach the final stage of the booking process, you get an error message because there actually isn't any available award space for your itinerary. You try again and get the same result.Unfortunately, you've discovered what is known as phantom award space.Phantom award space refers to award seats that appear in online searches but aren't actually bookable. This issue usually occurs when the inventory displayed by one loyalty program doesn't match what the operating carrier will actually confirm, often due to stale data or communication issues between reservation systems.Phantom award space is one of the most frustrating aspects of booking award flights. And, unfortunately, based on TPG staffers' experiences, phantom award space isn't all that rare. So, in this guide, we'll discuss some steps you can take before transferring your rewards to avoid being deceived by phantom award space.Why you should care about phantom award spacePhantom award space is most troubling if you're looking to tra...