Originally Posted by
The smallest state
No I am not being sarcastic. Not at all. If you get that AE agent, the HUCA. Some AP agents are fairly good and will try. The fact that you barge in and expect all AP agents to be proficient is indicative of YOU.
Maybe things like this don't happen at Fairmont, but AP has good, bad and indifferent agents. You just need to call and get a good one.
No doubt AE has a bunch of different agents (incl. some very nice ones), but even the good ones won't spend their time checking dozens (if not hundreds) routes trying to piece together such an itinerary IME.
At best a good agent may check alternative origin / destination airports, and maybe availability to a major hub vs. a secondary airport (e.g. AKL-YVR, AKL-YYZ etc. vs. AKL-YGK), but anything more than that is extremely rare IMHO.