¡Ayúdame! SkyTeam N00b Dealing With Flying Blue Phantom Award Availability

i’ve been trying to book a better return positioning flight from Mexico City back home to San Francisco for the $150 mistake fare to Buenos Aires, and found one via Air France’s Flying Blue on Aeromexico. (Flying Blue is a Membership Rewards partner so i transferred points.)

but when i tried to book it, i got almost to the end where it errored out saying “The last seats on this flight have already been booked and are no longer available.” i rang up their call center and the representative said it showed 2 seats available, but he was unable to grab even just one. (he explained sometimes there is a delay in updating things — what kind of reservation system does not work in realtime?)

sigh.

with miles just sitting in my Flying Blue account, i was thinking i could use them on a side trip from Buenos Aires to Salta in the north of Argentina (it’d be tight during my workation, but why not explore somewhere new?).

Flying Blue showed availability:

but when i tried to book them (even as one-ways), the site errored out even sooner than my previous attempt saying there was a technical problem. i called and the agent didn’t even show the AEP-SLA (the first flight) as being available. i had a hard time explaining the return to the representative (who did not seem to know what EZE was) but assume the same problem exists with those as well.

as a Star Alliance person, i’m pretty much a SkyTeam n00b*, but had read that Air France’s site is usually the best indicator of available award space. has anyone ever dealt with their site showing phantom award space before? are these seats really available? tips? tricks?

*sidebar as much as i like to poke fun at Delta SkyPesos, i did use them at the lowest redemption levels to fly from Stuttgart to Morocco and also from San Francisco to Berlin to see my favorite German band’s last concert. (miles earned because i used to fly Air France a lot to come home when i lived in Germany, before i became a Star Alliance loyalist.)

update

i used Wandering Aramean’s website to display award availability and it’s available (second in the list), so it looks like maybe Air France is blocking? or broken?

update 2

just in case you’re suggesting i HUACA (hang up and call again), i just did this morning. only three of the AEP-SLA flights are showing as available (not the one i want) and the MEX-SFO flight still is being the little trickster showing as yes, available, but then no, not really.

update 3

called back this morning and got a great agent (Ruben, <3) who was able to get seats on the AR flights. the taxes calculation on the website was incorrect for the second flight (sadly $45ish instead of $9+change). but he waived the $22(?) issuance fee since the site was broken. yay Ruben!