Originally Posted by
sha8192
Sorry for digging into an old post, but I think it is worth further clarification.
You're making general comments in response to a specific reply from several months ago, about fares that are no longer available.
This is certainly untrue. AC is happy to ticket an itinerary with at least one AC flight (tho sometimes, in rare situation, they can also bypass this requirement) as long as the partner fare rule allows it (category 15).
AC is not "happy" to ticket any itinerary with at least one AC flight. I have in the past worked with multiple travel agents as well as a friend who worked at AC Reservations for a while, and many fares that
could, in theory, be ticketed by AC according to OAL rules can't be, even if they have an AC segment (AC has various internal rules about what it will and won't ticket, regardless of what an OAL will allow). And the specific fares that the person I was replying to could not.
So YXU's suggestion is right, one can prepend a YOW-YYZ leg to "force" a 014 ticket and earn SQD, but it doesn't help if one is departing from YYZ (need positioning flight/transportation to YOW).
Again, this was not possible
with the fares that were being discussed in the post you quoted. It may sometimes be possible, but is not a given.
Some MS fare does, e.g. KLRECAO
That's fine. You've found a rare fare where this works. Usually, it doesn't. When it does, it's great to get SQD. But it's also possible to spend considerable amounts of time with Matrix trying to find something, and maybe even get it to price on the AC website, but be unable to complete the transaction because AC doesn't actually want to ticket it.