Originally Posted by
ywgckp
The website won't allow you to buy a flight direct from DOH/AUH to MLE - does anyone know if reservations will do this by phone?
The website doesn't want to sell you any itinerary that has a leg not touching Canada, so there's no surprise there, e.g. it also wouldn't sell you YYZ-SYD (stop)-PER (stop)-YYZ, or YVR-LHR (stop)-MUC (stop)-YVR.
You can sometimes push these things through from Google Flights or Matrix, albeit lately that seems to be dead (which is a subject for another thread that I've been working on).
But reservations can do many things the website can't.
Or more generally - can you book partner flights on 014 ticket stock only if it's in combination with an AC operated flight?
It sort of depends on how you mean "in combination". If you phone AC to book LHR-DOH (stop)-MLE (stop)-LHR, no, they're probably not going to want to do that, because there are no AC-marketed flights on the itinerary.
But what you're looking to do, they may be able to do, because you're going to have some AC metal from/to YWG at the very least.
Alternatively - can reservations book a multi-city booking with flights in different classes (latitude on AC, paid business on Etihad/Qatar, and a layover in the middle?
They probably can, but it may be a question of pricing. If the fare is broken at DOH/AUH anyway (i.e. priced as (i) YWG-DOH/AUH and (ii) DOH/AUH-MLE added together), it might not matter. But if the MLE fares involving QR/EY allow for free stopovers in DOH/AUH, it might not save you anything to book a leg in economy because you might already be paying the price for J from YWG to MLE.
I looked at a couple of AC fares for YWG-MLE, and they allowed free stopovers at DXB, but not DOH or AUH. Even though they allowed routing via DOH or AUH on QR/EY respectively. Which might mean you have to break the fare to get a stop in DOH/AUH, which could lead to higher cost.
If you're really set on DOH or AUH, you might consider trying to book this through QR or EY. They both have pretty generous free stopovers in their home cities, as far as I recall, and that might mean a more attractively priced all-J itinerary than messing around with a mix of Latitude and J.
As to the general concept of booking Latitude and upgrading, keep in mind Latitude can be very pricy, and the premium to get to J may be small, or even negative at times.