Originally Posted by
DavidYYC
I have two questions for any of the more experienced redeemers.
1) I have my route planned out (and Okayed by AE), as I search the segments for availability, I assume I can only call in when I have found the seats I am satisfied with on ALL my segments. But what if I can't find availably on only one for e.g. YYC-LAX(SFO) as my first segment. Do I wait until that becomes available before calling in and run the risk of losing the known/seen availability on the longer segs? Is there any way around this issue?
They will never "hold" a segment for you, i.e. you should call once you have the most desirable segments available. Typically, unless you are flying some backwater undesirable routes, you will NEVER have your ideal seats on ALL segments from the first shot - so find those that you're really OK with, and reserve the itinerary, then monitor the remaining segments and call in once they release seats on those (or call in to pay the $90 change fee and re-route to others - this is in case the segments you want are outright unavailable in any class of service lower than the one you are paying for).
Originally Posted by
DavidYYC
2) I am booking for two of us. Myself and the Mrs, I am using my AE miles for my costs and the Mrs AE miles for her costs. How do I get AE to allow me to use the miles in her account? Will this be booked as two separate itineraries? Transferring her miles to my account to cover her costs is just too expensive. How difficult are AE about this?
They won't transfer the miles - you will need to book under her name. Have her available when you call to authenticate herself, then just pass the handset back to you. You could probably have her add you as an authorized user with a note on her account or something to that effect - but generally, AE won't transfer the miles w/o a cost. Also: yes, it will be 2 separate itineraries, which can be a good thing if you NEED to get 2 seats of a kind and only 1 is available.