iztok

My agent verified with their manager or whoever is in charge of the *A routing and made double sure that my routing was legal. She did that before she called me with proposed routing. I was dealing with CP line (I can share name in PM if one is CP.). Basically I gave her the time parameter and wishlist and she worked on it for few days and called now and then to see if something would work for me and once she found routing that worked and was legal we booked it. I just got her info and will be sending some A&Bs soon! Plus she will get some postcards from the trip

puchalskir

I tried to book a routing today which I thought might be illegal. I was told it was because the only stopover allowed was in either FRA or MUC since I was flying over the Atlantic on LH. I asked 2 different agents.

I wanted to book PHL-FRA-DEL outbound all on LH
and
DEL-IST-CAI stopover in CAI for a few days then
CAI-FRA-PHL.

Since everything is so vague on what's allowed, do you think that if I were flying over to FRA on a US or UA flight, I'd be allowed more of a selection of stopover cities? In this case, if I used Air Egypt going in or out of Cairo would it be allowed or backtracking? I want to have a stopover on the return somewhere, but FRA nor MUC are attractive options.

Rich

johnep1

I have had great luck getting very liberal interpretations of the *A award rules when using US miles, but I have yet to be able to stopover in a city if not flying in on that city's hub airline. Sometimes you just need to take what you're given. On my last award I had to use Lisbon instead of Madrid and Zagreb instead of Split.

Be ready, willing, and able to ticket as soon as you find an agent willing to do something like this.

MattTaiwan

I tried 4 agent to get the following tickets:

CAN X NRT (stopover) by NH Business
NRT - JFK (destination) by NH Business
JFK X SFO (stopover)by UA First
SFO - NRT - CAN by NH Business

The first agent spent me 40 minutes to search and verify every single segment I want is legal or not, and share some very interesting views with me:

"I can not find any flights from CAN/Cajun to NRT/Tokyo operated by *A carriers, are you sure the airport code is CAN"
Of course you can't, because C-A-N is airport code of Guangzhou (China), I have no idea why CAN will become the airport code of Cajun, and I spell the airport code for you in advance.

"You're only allow to make one stopover in your trip"
Okay, repeat after me "One en route stopover is permitted at a US Airways hub city, a US Airways international destination or ticketed partner's hub city
per direction."... (I should hang-up my call right here)

"NRT is not a hub city so you can not make a stop over right there"
If Tokyo is not the hub city for Japan based airlines, which one could be? ICN or PEK?

I checked with my supervisor as well, you spend me 40 minutes.. ##$%%
Ya, the reason why we spend about 40 minutes cause you always provide a wrong information. I waste my $$ to make international calls but get a helpless agent? I am that person should make a complaint, not you lady!

fly2nrt

I just called US Airways with the following itinerary in business:

EWR-IAD (UA) IAD-NRT (NH)
[Stop]
NRT-AKL (NZ)
[Destination]
AKL-NRT (NZ)
[Stop]
NRT-IAD (NH) IAD-EWR (UA)

My first questions to the agent were:
Am I allowed a stop over at a partner hub city in each direction on an award ticket? Yes
Is Narita a partner hub city? Yes
Can I route to AKL via NRT? Yes

Anyway she was real nice and got me all the flights I wanted... calculated the mileage at 110K... asked for my info. When she went to price out the taxes, she put on hold for about 10 minutes and then came back and told me that on partner tickets, I am only allowed 1 stopover per itinerary.

She was understanding about it and put the ticket on hold as is but I thought my routing was valid? Can someone please confirm? I'll call back tomorrow morning to check with another agent but where exactly does it say that a partner award can only have 1 stopover?

johnep1

It's USAir, whether or not something is allowed by the rules has little to do with whether you can get it done. I give everyone the same advice, call back. Your routing should be obtainable.

vysean

+1 . Just call back. Since the itin is on hold, it should be relatively quick and painless unless they've stuck notes in your PNR.

All you have to do is refer them to the website statement. I'm certain they have Internet access there as they've frequently quoted content from other websites to me during a phone call.

vysean

If she put the itin on hold and didn't make any notes in it, all you should need to do is call back, get another agent, and say you want to go ahead and ticket it. I'd give it a greater than 50% chance that they go ahead and do so without any further checking since someone else has already built the record.

uva185

Has anyone had any luck getting an award from N. America (IAD) to N. Asia (HKG) via Europe. I would like the following...

IAD-MUC
(Stopover)
MUC-HKG
(Destination)
HKG-IST
IST-ZRH
(Stopover)
ZRH-ORD
ORD-IAD

I am one of those that was able to build a "faux RTW" but I booked that a year ago so I'm not sure how they are enforcing routing rules lately.

johnep1

Ticketed one of these last month (US to South Asia connecting in Europe). It took about 6 calls to get done. In the end US was even nice enough to just charge the US-Europe mileage.

thebobmc

From the US Airways website, the page titles "Dividend Miles membership guide" has been quoted previously in this thread;

http://www.usairways.com/awa/content...mberguide.aspx

Roughly a third of the way down the page, in a section titled "Partner Travel" the following statement is made;

One en route stopover per itinerary is permitted for select international travel awards.

Slightly further down the page, in a section titled "Stopovers" it states;

One en route stopover is permitted at a US Airways hub city, a US Airways international destination or ticketed partner's hub city per direction.

Since these two statements that appear to be contradictory appear on the same page on the website, it is probably not a surprise that US Airways phone agents apply varying interpretations of the stopover rules when booking *A award tickets.

Does anyone know with certainty which is correct ?

fly2nrt

I called again about my itinerary on Monday evening and asked for it to be ticketed. The agent came back and said again that I can only have 1 stopover on the itinerary. I referred her to this webpage and pointed out that yes it says that in one part and then says in each direction the other part.

She said that was weird but OK and ticketed as is.

iztok

^^

We can all bash US but when it comes to *A reward redemption they are one of the most flexible around. It might take a little while and few calls but it works. In my case I just told the CP angel my wishlist and she worked behind the scenes and called me from time to time to ask question and that was it.

fly2nrt

Yep. I priced out the flights I "bought" on orbitz.com.... $21,000! ^

iztok

Mine was $45k