My Wish: Star Alliance award Redemption, Single Phone Number
 

A colleague of mine here in Washington, DC is from New Zealand. He learned this morning that his sister is in the hospital in CHC and has only a few days to live.

So he and his wife needed to get home right away.

He had ~ 100k miles in his UA account and ~ 100k miles in his Air Canada account.

So I called UA and found 2 C seats IAD-LAX-SYD-CHC and CHC-AKL-LAX-IAD return. I reserved one with his UA miles and one with my UA miles -- just to make sure we could get them ticketed together. (I'd have loaned him miles from my account.)

Then I called AC and found the same flights and booked them with his miles, called UA back and booked one ticket with his miles and cancelled the other booking.

But this would have been a whole lot easier with a *A award redemption desk.

Furthermore, as we were looking for routings with the UA agent, they didn't know much about allowable *A routings. (The AC agent turned out to be much more familiar.)

So UA had no idea whether routing through SIN or NRT or BKK was allowable when we were having trouble finding LAX-SYD/AKL flights.

Having *A trained agents would sure be nice! FWIW.

Oh, and my other wish would be for electronic ticketing on all *A carriers.

[This message has been edited by gleff (edited 06-13-2003).]

If understand your "wish" correct, you like to have one *A award redemption desk with one single phone number for all 13 *A FFPs. If this is correct, I would recommend that you just do a quick overlook about terms & conditions about *A Awards in different *A FFPs. After a short time, you will realize, that the only thing this *A Awards have in common is the name and the idea to redeem an award using every single *A carrier for your journey. But the essential parts are different, eg.[list][*] How much mileage is required?[*] Is there a different amount of mileage required if I use different carriers?[*] Do the mileage levels apply only on direct flights between two award zones or is it possible to include a third award zone in the itinerary?[*] How many stopovers are allowed?[*] How many transfers are permitted?[*] Is backtracking permitted?[*] Are side trips allowed?[*] What's about open jaws ?[*] On which airline partners other than *A carriers can I redeem miles/points?[*] Which airline partners other than *A carriers can I combine?[*] Is waitlist permitted on flight awards if the requested booking class is not available at time of reservation?[*] Can I change my itinerary (=reroute) of my flight award?[*] Can I change my date of travel or the flight number I am booked on?

So IMO your "wish" leads to the intention that there is only one *A FFP for all *A members which looks like that this is not a very realistic approach at this time.