Canadian Airlines Plus - AC/CP Different Award Inventories

Tried to book a business class ticket for YYZ to YVR today for the end of May. Chose three days at the end of May, and to my surprise, no seats available through Canadian Plus on CP or AC flights in business or economy. When I made the facetious comment that I bet I could book on Aeroplan, the agent confirmed that this was true, and they in fact had separate inventories.

I then called Aeroplan and they had seats for two of the three days I wanted to go!

Is this a way that Milt is trying to screw over Canadian Plus passengers? Anyone else have this type of experience?



[This message has been edited by YYZ (edited 05-08-2000).]

I get it the opposite way, can't book upgrades at time of reservation on CP flights (even on AC codeshare numbers) when paying through AC and using Aeroplan upgrades. Nothing sinister, just the two computer systems are totally incompatible and they have higher priorities to work on right now. The agents are not too happy about all the manual processing required.

I don't think management understands computers and how much work this all would be.

This extends into other areas as well. Don't get electronic tickets (they won't issue them for CP and AC mixed flights anyway) until it is all sorted out. If you try to get on the other carrier's flight when you have an electronic ticket with exclusive flights on one or the other you will have to get "paper" versions anyway (another line to stand in). http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

When checking the prices on itn.net, AC always has cheaper fares than CP, even when the AC flight is a codeshare on CP metal! I digressed a bit, but it shows that AC is getting preferred treatment.

While there may be a bias towards AC in pricing it may be because cheaper seats sell out quicker on the CP side of the plane by people consciously booking CP. But I know what you mean since I've been trying to find a good fare to YVR at the end of the month, and AC seems to come up more times than CP (though AC has more capacity out of YEG).

In the "old days" e-tickets didn't seem to be as much of a problem as you imply, BB. More times than not, I'd be booked on an AC flight between YEG and YYC and it would be cancelled. We would be protected on the next CP flight out and those of us with e-tickets had no problem. Even had my Cdn+ number put on the flight. Appears as if there are more problems now that the carriers are working together, than when they were competing with one another.