sevenseasons

I found a great deal with ITA Matrix that involves Alitalia and Swiss flights. The final price was incredibly good (itinerary quite ridiculous, but it would have been good to gain some points with Swiss). Anyway, I sent all the details to a travel agency and they told me that it was impossible to book it as the airlines didn't allow the route to be put on one ticket. It would have been 600 EUR more expensive when bought separately. My guess would be that it is because of code-sharing, or to be more precise, the lack of it between AZ and LX.

Is there any way to go around this refusal? Might there be any other reasons for this?

clacko

posting the details might help....that itin is rather vague!

sevenseasons

Yes, here is the itinerary:

Milan (BGY) to Palermo (PMO) -12.09

Alitalia Milan (BGY) to Rome (FCO)
Dep: 7:00AM Arr: 8:10AM
Alitalia Rome (FCO) to Palermo (PMO)
Dep: 10:15AM Arr: 11:30AM

Palermo (PMO) to Milan (BGY) 21.09

Alitalia Palermo (PMO) to Venice (VCE)
Dep: 10:05AM Arr: 11:40AM
Swiss Venice (VCE) to Zurich (ZRH)
Dep: 2:45PM Arr: 4:00PM
Swiss Zurich (ZRH) to Rome (FCO)
Dep: 5:35PM Arr: 7:05PM
Alitalia Rome (FCO) to Milan (BGY)
Dep: 9:15PM Arr: 10:25PM

BryanIAH

What price are you seeing on ITA? 176 euro?

sevenseasons

Yes, exactly that price and it includes all taxes etc when checking the detailed fare description.

Jinxy

As a frequent flyer with Alitalia and their partners, i would think one of the reasons the agent said it couldnt be done may have something to do with the codeshare issue. If it was Airfrance (which Alitalia also use a lot with their internals) it may be a different story.
I know I have found it difficult in the past to get tickets issued with Alitalia on strange routes that noone but me can find in their systems!

BryanIAH

The 176 euro price is based on a European sales city so any US-based websites will be higher. Is your TA in the US or Europe?

Next, the price you are seeing is available for one way tickets. When you're on a complex itinerary it is usually easier to book two one way tickets instead of a RT.

So let's break it down to two parts:

BGY-FCO-PMO
PMO-VCE-ZRH-FCO-BGY

I'm not familiar with Italian travel sites so I used expedia.it which charges a 5 euro booking fee each direction.



I couldn't get PMO-VCE-ZRH-FCO-BGY to work. Is there any Italian or EU law that would prevent an Italy-Italy ticket from leaving Italy? If so this might be the problem.

The PMO-FCO-BGY routing is available on 21/9 for the same price as BGY-FCO-PMO.

sevenseasons

I got another letter from travel agency and they said that AZ and LX do have an agreement. It was this particular itinerary that couldn't be put on one ticket.