johndeere19

I hope you mean $0.009/mile...

tommyleo

You are correct. Good catch!

L4ibsch

I'm happy to report from personal experience now that an open-jaw for a single-region award does not seem to pose any problems. But an open-jaw PLUS a stop-over will I got a friendly agent that was trying to book me a stopover to get around unavailability on the day that I was planning to travel originally. The computer did price the itinerary but would not return a confirmation number no matter how hard she tried.

CleverK1

Hi

I have a question regarding an LH F award booking.
I guess the following routing is allowed?
FCO-FRA-IAD-FRA-BER (TXL)

The ANA tool doesn't show any availability but the LH MM page shows availability: FCO-FRA (C);FRA-IAD (F);IAD-FRA (F);FRA-TXL (C) if I ask in 4 single queries.
However asking for FCO-FRA-IAD-FRA-TXL (F) in one single query doesn't show any availability.

Using my travel agency sabre system - I can reserve an itinery
FCO-FRA in I
FRA-IAD in O
IAD-FRA in O
FRA-TXL in I
-> These are the appropriate booking classes according to the *A booking class chart.

Do you think US callcenter would be able to book me my itinery?

Thanks for your help...i really enjoy this forum.

chewy3

If it's not on ANA you likely will not be able to -- M&M releases more seats to its own members. There is only one way to find out for sure though.

rrgg

I understand there's a $150 fee per passenger for changing anything about an award booking. I just want to change a flight time for 2 of us, and $300 will be steep. Without being chairman, has anyone had luck getting the fee waived?

chewy3

Two ways to get it waived:

1. Schedule change
2. If the agent making the original booking made a mistake

NewbieRunner

For the moment F award seats on LH's A380 are only available to *G members of Miles & More.

Yes. Why are you comparing F and C?

rrgg

Well it's actually worse than I thought. I decided I'd be willing to eat the fee and called.

I asked to get on a different outbound LX flight and was told they'd cancel the entire awards, redeposit miles, and rebook from scratch. I don't want to change the return flights, but since they don't show extra awards available, there's no guarantee I could even get them again. With other airlines I've been able to change a single segment or even the airline without canceling out the whole award first. This approach is so risky, I can't even believe it's their policy. It's really the risk now that bothers me more than the fee, not to mention that this makes their fee wholly unjustified.

AZ Travels the World

You're getting an agent who either doesn't know how to do it, or doesn't want to take the time to do it. I know for a fact that it can be done, as I've done it. But I've also gotten the same answer you received, even from a CP agent, so you just have to keep calling until you get someone who has the skill or will to do it or find out how to do it.

gleff

+1 just call back and ask again.

L4ibsch

I've talked to 5 or 6 agents by now about this, more out of curiosity than necessity. All of them said that reservations involving numerous partner airlines have to be restarted from scratch. Some even claimed this to be the case for itineraries on hold, not yet ticketed, but I'm a bit doubtful about that. I'm starting to wonder if certain itineraries just cannot be changed easily. It certainly looks like you'd have to make a lot of calls.

AZ, are your experiences recent and with a ticketed itinerary that involved numerous partner airlines? Don't get me wrong, I hope you come back to say "yes". How many times did you have to call back to find an agent willing and able to make such a change for you?

Once travel has started no changes are possible at all, not even in extreme circumstances (like the political turmoil in Thailand recently).

I understand your feeling. But you should acknowledge that the fee has nothing to do with the effort they have to put in. It's a contractual agreement that doesn't need "justification" by costs or effort. You agreed to this rebooking fee when you made the original reservation. It's part of the T&C. FWIW, this fee used to be much higher until very recently. You're kind of lucky, here.

gleff

I've only ever needed one hang up, call back to change a 'complicated' multi-carrier itinerary without cancelling and starting over. And my experiences are in the past couple of months.

rrgg

I think you've misunderstood. Despite what you wrote I was FULLY aware of the fees from the start. In fact, I wrote a formal letter to US Airways about the $250 fee 6 weeks before they changed it. I listed the policy of several airlines and politely asked them to be more competitive. I hope my suggestion helped sway their decision.

Despite what you wrote I don't feel the fee is related to effort. I merely said that for this amount of cash they should have the technical skill to merely protect my reservation. That's not an unreasonable request.

In any case, I posted here just to warn others. This kind of technical detail is not stated in their T&C as far as I can tell (that they cannot change my flight time on my *A reservation without starting from scratch and potentially losing my flights).

gleff

They absolutely can change flights without starting from scratch. Again, talk to another agent.