I have never encountered this bizarre situation before, and apparently neither had the agent helping me.

Was trying to do what I thought was a simple POP-HEL-DEL one-way award: AY 22 connecting to AY 121 the next day using a single 45K AAdvantage award. Simple right? Not quite. While I can find space for each segment individually on both aa.com and ba.com, when I (1) search POP-DEL on aa.com, I get routed POP-HEL-LHR-DEL and (2) When I search on ba.com it would give me both the flights on one record, but when I click through, it would not price.

So I called both AA and BA. The AA agent was able to enter both segments into a single record and price correctly for 45K. But when she ended the record… voilà! POP-HEL came back unconfirmed, but HEL-DEL still showed confirmed. So I said let me try to book POP-HEL online and have her add HEL-DEL. So I did, and got a record locator and then she added HEL-DEL and priced it out… so far so good… ended the record… and Boom! This time, HEL-DEL came back unconfirmed. Totally outstanding!

So I said OK, if the website appears to want to force an LHR stop, let’s do it. So let’s try POP-HEL on AY 22 connecting to HEL-LHR on AY 1337. Both showing award space available. Shocker! Can’t do it. POP-HEL is OK but HEL-LHR comes back unconfirmed. OK Let’s try some other European connection. Say CDG. And then CDG-India on like EY or something. Again, no problem building POP-HEL and HEL-CDG both on AY and then picking up EY in CDG. Agent built the record for 45K miles. Ended the record… Kaboom! HEL-CDG came back unconfirmed. WHAT!!!

Of course I was not going to ticket POP-HEL and HEL-DEL each separately. Cuz then if I should be blessed with IRROPs on POP-HEL, then they’ll protect me only to HEL… and dump me in HEL!! (ha, how appropriate :-) ) and I’ll lose everything on HEL-DEL.

So after being on this Sunday morning merry-go-round for about a half hour, both she and I were losing patience… but I really wanted something sensible held without a hole in it… so I told her… let’s try just ONE more routing. This time still take me POP-HEL on AY 22 but then instead of AY 1337 HEL-LHR, let’s do BA 799 HEL-LHR and pick then up EY in LHR. Fingers crossed… nothing ventured nothing gained.

Well… whaddya know, she ended the record and I pulled up the rez online… and there they were! All 4 segments confirmed. Of course not my preferred option since we are now introducing a third airline into the mix and the connection in LHR is shorter. But at least SOMETHING is holding. So essentially what is happening is that AY, in this instance, is not allowing 2 AY segments to be booked connecting to each other. I imagine it is AY 22 (POP-HEL) which is not allowing an onward connection on AY, either to LHR, CDG or DEL or wherever. Did not seem like connection times were what was causing the issue because there are several hours between AY 22 and any of those other AY flights. So why on earth would AY specifically exclude an AY-AY connection when AY-BA is confirming just fine?

I then called BA. The agent could, like me, see both POP-HEL and HEL-DEL segments individually but when she searched for POP-DEL, it wouldn’t come up. She offered to go to her Help Desk but I said that’s OK, if something happens to my AA rez I’ll call you back and just left it at that. I had a sunny Sunday to enjoy, not play speculative games all day.

So bottom line... I’ve NEVER in my ~20 years of searching for award space seen this kind of an “Un-married” segment situation. I’ve certainly seen married segs where you have to book the two together or none at all, but I’ve never seen where if you book the 1st segment on one carrier, it will not let you book the next segment on that same carrier as a connection. You have to use a different carrier if you want it on the same record.

1st time for everything!