Originally Posted by
Gnopps
Sorry, I think I may have expressed myself unclearly. What I meant by blank pnr was that you start a completely new reservation, so that when you check availability it its not impacted by any other flights.
It's a lot clearer now.
It seems like it's easiest to redeem the vouchers with a simple round trip IST-XXX and book early, like 6+ months ahead where you'd see J9 on flightstats.com.
The married segment seems to dictate the availabilities of J Class, as well as Comfort Class (A vs O), and this can drive casual flyers insane.
For example, I wanted to book JFK-IST on Comfort Class on certain periods, it gives you A fares
only on selected/few departure dates. However, if I book it with connections, JFK-IST-XXX (IST-XXX is economy), A fares are widely available during the same period.
To make things even crazier into another dimension, different connection times dictate availabilities on the same segment(s). In the example above, JFK-IST-XXX, the connecting flight IST-XXX (multiple dailies) with shortest layover at IST doesn't have A fare at all (you have to purchase O or U fares on JFK-IST), even though you're taking exactly the same JFK-IST flight in the same cabin.