Originally Posted by
thtsapaddlin
Hi all.
I've currently got a CAI-AUH-LAX-SFO itinerary on hold through tomorrow night. I'd like to change the reservation and depart instead from AMM, but cannot make the change to the current itinerary because, according to the agent, I already have the last two AUH-LAX seats on hold. The computer does not, apparently, permit me to swap out the CAI-AUH segment for AMM-AUH because the AUH-LAX segment has no availability (since I've already reserved them). I've got three questions for you folks:
1. Is this a pretty widely-reported issue? Or is it just a matter of me calling the wrong call center?
2. If I let my hold expire, do those seats almost certainly (i.e. with rare exception) go back into inventory? Seems like it would be reasonable to just let my hold expire and call to book a new award later.
3. A helpful agent suggested that if I really want this itinerary, I should just ticket the reservation and call later to make a change to the origin. But it seems that I'd be subject to change fees with absolute certainty and, also, I could envision running into the same issue I'm currently encountering wrt the AUH-LAX segment. That's a bad idea, right?
Thanks for the help!
Well, thanks to the help of an incredible phone agent, I've got a resolution.
I outlined my issue (that previous agents couldn't get the segment to "stick" despite seeing availability) and she proactively found a couple of alternative routings on EY through Chicago, even offering to try to have some domestic space opened up for me from ORD-SFO. I asked her to kindly keep those options in mind but that I'd love, instead, for her to attempt to get that AMM-AUH routing on EY to confirm. For the record, both etihad.com and EF were showing 2 seats. She tried and inexplicably had no luck. She said, "Let me see if I can figure something out," and went silent for a few minutes. She came back saying, "I tried a bunch of EY options, but couldn't get any of those to work. So instead, I found a Royal Jordanian flight and had no problem inserting it into the reservation. If that doesn't work for you, we can keep searching, but the system will let me put this itinerary on request." Turns out the RJ option resulted in a more ideal departure time and a much shorter connection in AUH. She really was a saint for going out of her way to find something that worked.
I fear that I've gone into too much detail here, but the datapoint is this: I was unable to modify a held reservation when swapping out one EY segment for another, but was able to successfully modify the reservation when swapping an EY segment for a segment on another OW carrier.
I imagine this will be of narrow interest, but I thought I'd share nonetheless.