Four out, three back on a joker?
Good morning
Questions like the one I’m about to ask always tend to make my head spin but I know there are people on here who’ll just lap this up – here’s hoping anyway.
My daughter has gained a place at the University of Michigan starting this autumn, or fall as I’ll have to start calling it. So the plan is that we’ll all - self, wife, son and daughter - fly out to ORD towards the end of August, and then the three of us will fly back from ORD around 2nd Sept, leaving daughter in Ann Arbor.
I would like to simultaneously play a joker, companion voucher and gold upgrade – I’m going to lose them if I don’t use them soon and the joker is the only way I can get flights to ORD at the time I need them. I only have one companion voucher but I have enough gold upgrades for all four of us.
However, will the fact that one of us is only travelling one way complicate any of that? Can I book all four of us out there but only three back and still use all the vouchers? If I can’t, presumably I could book 4 returns and simply throw away her return but I can see that leading to complications when a party of three rather than four turns up at ORD for the return journey.
In fact, in an ideal world, rather than book her a one-way ticket or throw away the return leg, I’d much prefer to book her a return ticket as well but with the return leg a lot later than the rest of us, say Christmas. But I can’t believe for one minute that I can get that done under a single booking.
The absolutely critical thing is that we all travel out together and that basically means the joker has to cover 4 people outwards because there is no ORD availability otherwise when we need it. With that non-negotiable requirement uppermost in mind, what’s the best way to finesse this?