FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - USA International Airline Program (IAP) relaunched as discount benefit (2017).
Old Apr 8, 2022 | 12:21 am
  #675  
Gig103
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Originally Posted by nexusCFX
I don't know if that truly is the case, but I had an experience recently that has led me to make some subsequent bookings on the website or directly with the airline.

I called into PTS as usual, and I asked to book YYZ-DXB-MLE in EK F which was not showing up on the AMEXTravel site for some reason even though you can see it in matrix, book it with EK and the individual segments showed up when searching separate. The phone agent said they couldn't see it, even when I fed them the flight numbers, which suggests to me that they were not using tooling any better than the website. If they were a proper travel agent they should have been able to price it out.

I had another case around the same time where the agent was super slow and just generally seemed inept. I never ran into these issues in the past.
I haven't called PTS since Covid, so my experience is most certainly dated... But even in late 2019 my experience was similar to yours. There were routes PTS could not find that Google Flights (not even Matrix) had. And I mean they were completely unavailable, not merely at market rates (opposed to IAP rates). Not sure how Amex fills their inventory to explain this.
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