Originally Posted by
1Newflyer
I honestly would pay the booking fee and more to be able to see what is available and bookable on my own using their own tools. The time I spent researching the last trip and @ $15/hr probably would get me a revenue ticket and better connections.
Break up your planned segments flight by flight, city by city and see what's available on aeroplan.com. Use phantom return dates to make it work if you can't do one-way searches. I also find ua.com to get an idea of alternatives. For example, when I was searching YVR-SIN, aeroplan.com would only show YVR-TPE-SIN. So I tried YVR-TPE and then it showed YVR-TPE and YVR-(UA Y)-SFO-TPE. I then tried YVR-TPE on UA.com and it showed YVR-LAX-TPE all J. I tried YVR-LAX and LAX-TPE as separate searches on aeroplan.com and confirmed the flights are available. Then I searched TPE-SIN to find an appropriate late flight so that I could spend the day in TPE.
I'm not sure that even if you had access to what the agents have that it would save you any time or give you better options. When I booked my itinerary, my agent tried YVR-SIN then YVR-TPE and couldn't get the flight combinations I wanted to show, so he had to go segment by segment. I also found UA.com more useful than ANA at suggesting alternative connections, except they no longer show any SQ flights.