Originally Posted by
malcolmkettering
Personally, I enrolled online for free in BA and QF FF programs and used their award systems to find availability, always searching for individual segments, never connecting flights. I recently booked two OW190C flights (<35,000 miles in Business) with 16 segments and it took about 25 minutes. I had the dates, flight numbers and carriers and the AAgent just booked each segment as I called it out. The part that took the longest was calculating the taxes. Email confirmation came in <24 hours.
I have done this also, and it is by far the best way to do it, IMO. The OW award rules are complex, and most agents don't book these much and are not as familiar with the process as I am. I have had an agent tell me that I couldn't connect twice and stopover once at LHR on the same ticket, but she put it in the way I asked her to (after warning me it wouldn't work) and of course it did. When I call, I tell the agent the award I am redeeming, and that I have all the flights I want. Takes one phone call, about 10 minutes. I find that I am better at locating flights with availability that meet my needs than the agent is, probably because I know my needs better.