not to be a contrarian but in june i was trying to get my assistant a business or first saver award stl to hkg. there was no way to get her all the way there but the exp agent i was dealing with found me seats for her round trip stl nrt in first but could not get her to hkg. i then asked her how much a ticket nrt hkg was and she found a $750ish round trip coach fare on cx which worked.

i asked her to book it and hold it. she was able to do it on one record locator and emailed it to me. she told me that by doing it this way aa had control of the entire record and it would work as one ticket. later that day i called back and ticketed both the award and the purchased cx ticket. i printed out the record and it listed it as on request but still had both tickets on one record. i then received two separate tickets from aa, one for each flight, each with a separate ticket number but both with the same record locator. i checked the record and both tickets were on the same record.

i just reviewed the paper work to make sure i remembered it correctly and i did. two things to consider: aa made both reservations and ticketed both reservations at the same time.