Originally Posted by
freeflyer
Hi guys, I'd like to ask what you think WS would do in a similar situation that AC did for me recently with a Basic fare ticket.
I was supposed to fly HKG-YVR (CX) -YYZ (AC) and connect to a separate YYZ-YQM Basic fare ticket on AC. It was a risk, I know! Unfortunately, we were delayed out of HKG and I missed my connection to YYZ, so CX rebooked me on AC leaving the next morning. I went to the AC customer service counter and told them my situation, including that I would have booked everything on one ticket, but neither the AC nor CX websites would let me book this particular routing on one ticket. They were willing to rebook my YYZ-YQM flight to a later one I could catch, telling me that normally they wouldn't do that but because my incoming delayed flight was on AC, they would help me out this time, for which I was very grateful.
I'd like to fly like this routing again, and sometimes CX uses WS for it's YVR-YYZ connection. I'm wondering if the same thing happened and my incoming WS flight was delayed and I had a separate connecting Basic fare WS ticket, would they help me out or tell me tough luck...?
First off, if you want to combine two routing like that onto the same the ticket it can be done.
Travel Agents have more flexibility in their software to ticket all sorts of things like this across multiple airlines. CX has interline agreements with both AC and WS. Some times you can do these things on a travel agents website (e.g. Expedia) and sometimes it needs to be done by one with real employees.
The other way to trick the airline system is a multi-segment routing. On the AC site do the HKG-YYZ as one trip then the next trip is YYZ-YQM. You should be able to do that on the AC website.
As for AC and WS letting you do this on a deeply discounted ticket, if it had been on one ticket then yes would have had to rebook you. Separate tickets then I think your dependent on what I call the "I am overworked so we will make the problem go away" principle. The software probably does not stop them from doing it, the rules are to complex and there is a line of people, so they do what they have to do make the problem go away so they can move on to the next person. It probably happens more frequently than airline management types would want.