blaz

I have a one way award ticket booked SFO-CDG-DUB in O class (business) on Aug 15. I don't need to be in Dublin until Aug 24, so I'm trying to drop the second leg of this flight (CDG-DUB) and add a couple more intra-Europe flights out of CDG (more convenient than DUB).

The ticket allows changes for a 45 EUR fee. I called AF and their agent told me he has to cancel the ticket and rebook me on SFO-CDG, but there's no availability. If I do a one-way award search for SFO-CDG on that same date I can see availability at the saver level for 62500 miles, which is exactly the same amount of miles I originally paid for this ticket. I have no miles left in my FB account, so I can't check if this is actually bookable.

It seems like my options are:

1. Cancel the ticket online with the 45 EUR fee. Hope that the availability at 62500 miles is not a phantom and that I will actually be able to book that flight once my miles are redeposited.
2. Transfer enough miles to AF so that I can book the alternative flight without canceling the original ticket first. This would mean I would strand 62500 miles. As I rarely fly on AF tickets (usually fly on Delta 006 tickets), I would likely eventually lose the miles due to expiration.
3. Travel light and don't check any luggage, then skip the CDG-DUB leg. This will be somewhat challenging due to the nature of my plans and the length of the stay.
4. Fly the itinerary as originally ticketed and waste an entire day flying to DUB and then onward from DUB to where I actually want to go.

What still gives me hope is that the agent I talked to seemed clueless. He told me to call Air France to confirm award availability. Huh? Who does he think I called? I asked him which number to call and he gives me the number I called to reach him... I guess I got a clueless Delta agent, so perhaps even his claim that there is no award availability on that date is bogus.

Other than HUACA, any other suggestions? Is there a way for me to confirm that the award availability for 62500 miles SFO-CDG on Aug 15 is actually real?

kevinflyaway

I just checked on the same date and indeed shows availability for 62.500 miles (business). So I don't think it's phantom availability. Thats can sometimes happen, but until so far I thought thats possible only when you have at least a 2 segment ticket (1 segment would have seats, hence the fact that it will show the itinerary but then later it seems that the other segment does not have enough seats, therefore phantom).

You can always call again and speak to another agent. Mostly that will solve the mysterie. But in the end all you can do is cancel this ticket, pay the €45 and then rebook.

HalconBCN

What you can do is do a mock booking on the FB website or the award booking tool on the AF app. When you get to the payment page you will already have a booking confirmation number. Then you can call FB and ask them to make the adjustments. I think that would work.

blaz

Unfortunately that doesn't work. As soon as I get to the page where I could try to book it, it tells me I don't have enough miles available. Obviously I don't want to strand more miles by transferring them over from my CC.

I also tried a second call to Flying Blue and the second agent also confirmed there is no availability at the saver level.

In the end I decided to adjust my plans so I will fly all the way to DUB after all...

ekartash

Is it possible to just drop a leg of an award ticket and pay the changes fee? ex trn - ams - jfk. drop trn - ams and keep ams - jfk. Or would ams - jfk need to be available again?

irishguy28

It *should* be possible, but you would have to ring up and speak to an agent to do this. Please return and tell us your experience.

Be warned that, unless you have the ticket successfully changed by dealing with a Flying Blue agent, turning up at AMS to take your AMS-JFK flight will not be possible if the TRN-AMS segment remains uncancelled and you don't show up at TRN to take that flight.

MSPeconomist

If OP has DL miles, could he/she book SFO-CDG (plus the desired intraEU flight) with DL miles. If that works, cancel the existing ticket. Next, try to book SFO-CDG with FB miles, as desired (or actually SFO-CDG-XXX) and if it works, cancel the DL award ticket, within 24 hours if OP doesn't have DL DM/PM status. In the worst case, the result is using DL rather than FB miles for the trip. This is more likely to work if actual AF award availability is multiple seats rather than just one in O class.


EF shows AF O award availability IIRC. This might help, although note that apparently not all of the O seats are available for DL miles.