Originally Posted by
planenut321
Santiago has had a flash fare loaded in the First cabin. £5499 for two passengers (companion fare) for travel in October to January - same set up as Cape Town offer last month. Finishes on 6th August. Normal fare over £6k for one passenger usually.
Determined to visit Chile, I initially let the BA flash fare expire: preferred a bit more TPs and something ex-CH. Switzerland is not known for great ex-CH fares - the people here are just too well off for that.
I then spotted a ZRH-SCL AA fare, allowing for BA+AY metal and HEL as TP booster: ZRH-HEL-LHR-MIA-SCL and back for CHF3234 (£2546) all-J (800 TP) or CHF4234 (£3333) with LHR-MIA-LHR in F (940TP). Not a huge deal for most FTers, but provides the TPs I want, and takes me nicely to Chile. (Itinerary similar to mine below).
With mixed cabins and mixed operating airlines, the finally successful booking and payment was not easy:
- Booking on aa.com resulted in an error message
- Calling AA resulted in a much higher fare (even though the agent seemed skilled)
- bookwithmatrix took happily my Matrix screenshot and gave the right price on aa.com. However, as soon as I wanted to pay with my Swiss credit card, aa.com switched to their Swiss site and wanted to start a booking from scratch
- The key towards success was bookwithmatrix, select "Book with American" and then put the booking on hold. I then called AA Switzerland to pay in CHF with my Swiss cc and got the job done! I even got the last AY/AA segment changed to a much earlier AY flight where AA has no codeshare
Have other European FTers experienced the same bookwithmatrix+AA payment problem?
A bonus question for those in the know: I now have one PNR for AA (with 8 segments) and a second one for BA+AY - with only 7 segments, the first one with AY missing! Should I not worry, or call AA? Or call BA or AY?
