Originally Posted by
mikilan
I have a similar type question but no reply. If I am not supposed to post here and should start a new thread, my apologies and please tell me. I had one Aeroplan rep who was nice to answer my queries but the second time I called a different rep refused to spend time because I was not booking. I can't book if I don't know what I am or am not allowed!
Business class on Aeroplan allows 2 stopovers AND (not "OR" I think) one open-jaw. I presume destination city does not count as one of these 3, correct? So, is this route valid?
YVR-LHR (stopover) - AMS (stopover) - ZRH (destination) - FCO (open jaw) - YVR (home)
Is there a restriction in terms of direction?- I read somewhere you can only fly east to west or north to south but not both or backtrack.
And do you have to do the whole trip with one airline only?
The rep also mentioned something about having to calculate the total miles to determine what is acceptable or not. How do I do this? Thank you for your help.
I cannot answer all of your questions but can give some advice
1) Would start a new thread specific to your question. Will get seen by more people
2) Check out other threads about stopover / open jaw rules as well as point of turnaround, allowed direction and MPM vs. published routings. There is a lot of info, I cannot say I understand all of it, but there is lot of information if you search through this forum.
3) I think you get either 2 stopovers or 1 stopover and and open jaw, but not sure. Would check to be sure yo ucould be right you get 2 stopovers and an open jaw, I am confused by that myself.
4) MPM is the maximum permitted miles. If you find a website with the Great Circle Map it will tell you the mileage between 2 cities, MPM is the max amount of miles you can take to get there using connections and is some percentage over the actual mileage, I think roughly 25%. Beyond that and you are over MPM
5) Published routings are valid connections between cities, no clue how one can see a list, but maybe KVS will show them.
6) Once you figure out all the rules, apparently if you find something that works but is outside of a rule, like over MPM or an invalid route. Then you can try to call repeatedly and get different agents and you may find one who will give it to you. Seems to be a common thing and some agents will help more and some rules seem so arcane that many agents do not know them all, and may prevent you from booking a valid route or they could book an invalid route for you. What I do know is once your tickets are issued, they are official and cannot be revoked if someone later finds out it was invalid. Caveat to that is if you try to change them, they can be invalidated at the change request time as that agent will revalidate the entire ticket.
7) Does not have to be one airline, any * Alliance airline is fine with Aeroplan. the ANA tool is good for this.
It does sound like you got a rep who was unwilling to help, most reps will stay on the phone and work through options with you. If a rep is unhelpful or says they can only talk to you if you are booking, just hang up and call again.