I finally have some good news! Spent over an hour on hold then another 45 minutes on with an agent who admittedly, I kinda wrote off when he started the call. But this guy was a slow rock star!

1) can you cherry pick flights segment by segment? YES definite YES, do not let them tell you otherwise, this guy just did it.

2) YVR-MEX-BOG-MDE 4,545 miles, not ideal for maximizing points as it's only 50 miles above the threshold, but It means I don't need an antigen test, so even though I paid a $30 phone booking fee, it saves me $100 for the test and I learned stuff, so I'll take it. AC/AV/AV, my YVR-MEX booked into S class, total cost, 39,800 points and $115.

Now, if you've followed my whiny posts, I was trying to get to MVD. But here's what seems to be happening with that, it looks like phantom availability on the AC site. I've searched the same flights on the Copa site and they're not listed as available in Saver, which is what Aeroplan would be pulling from. So I may just book some of those flights on the website and see what happens, maybe they have to buy me the seat again and I can credit it to a different Star program. But the moral of the story seems to be if you can find them segment by segment on the AC site, you should be able to stitch them together, as long as you obey the other rules. The other strange thing in this particular booking, my price actually came in UNDER to 40,000 miles for a partner booking advertised on the award chart. I'm not sure what to make of that exactly. I suppose if you search for an AC award on the UA site, your pricing should be able to be more predictable, as in, closer to the advertised price, because my YVR-MEX flight is of course available every day, but the cost is different daily. So I'm not sure how that would've affected me if I had gone with a more expensive leg there.

As far as I'm concerned the program positivity is back to where it was for me when announced. It really does just come down to getting the correct agents and hopefully some day they'll fix the website. I still don't know all the math when adding AC flights, but I don't think we ever will. But at least now I know for sure they CAN do this, so I can press agents who say they can't.

Damn you lol. I miss being an SE when my calls went directly in.