Updated on December 14, 2023
BA Avios Award Search Error / Glitch
10/28/15 Update: Glitch fixed
If you have been trying to use the British Airways Avios award search tool lately, you will notice it has been displaying the BA Avios Award Search Error above. I thought “oh great, another BA glitch” and patiently waited, and waited. But today I stopped and took a really hard look. Notice anything off besides the error message?
It appears that BA made an update that defaults the number of passengers from the usual “1” to “0” and instead of displaying an error along the lines of “please select the correct number of passengers” it states:
Error: Sorry, there's a problem with our systems. Please try again, and if it still doesn't work, you might want to try again later.
The Solution
- Change the 0 to 1 or more passengers and voila…it works:
Other Problems
BA still shows phantom award space on Cathay Pacific. Unfortunately, this has been a long outstanding problem with the BA Avios award search tool and there is no fix for it at the moment. For now, 1 problem down, many to go. I hope someone at British Airways fixes this soon!
I go the same error message this morning and the number of passengers was 2. I got it after searching and choosing outbound and inbound rewards flights.
This, along with their global rewards search function not working ever (“not available in my area”), and epically long call wait times to book, has made me regret transferring a ton of Amex Platinum points to BA.