Originally Posted by
Matthew_DC
A booking quirk. Traveling MAD→MEX in March in C. I do not want to go on Avianca via Bogota.
I was hoping for MAD→FRA→MEX. No LH C availability on the Lifemiles website from FRA→MEX. I started playing around with other EU cities and checked VIE-MEX. Interestingly, the website offered me VIE→FRA (OS) → MEX (LH) in C, on the flight I wanted. I went back and checked FRA→MEX (LH) and there was nothing. I ended up booking it from VIE and will make my way to VIE on a separate ticket from Madrid. It's always an adventure with the Lifemiles website.
This is normal with LH award space. There's married segment logic in the availability. Other airlines do this as well - can definitely confirm AF/KL. I'm not sure what's going on, but right now the only way I was able to get any kind of LH summer availability to the west coast was to slap on an additional segment served by OS. Occasionally I'd see it work with an LX segment added as well, but less reliable. So for folks shopping summer flights, definitely try VIE or ZRH.
In fact, a big part of why our trip this summer will start in Vienna is because I was able to get YVR-FRA-VIE on LH/OS, but not YVR/SEA-FRA/MUC non-stop only. I usually like to just book the non-stops to/from the hub before we've figured out our actual plans, figuring that intra-europe travel is otherwise pretty inexpensive (train or plane) and we'd sort out the rest later. But hey, I've always wanted to go to Vienna. And we'll figure out how to get back to Paris for the CDG-YVR return.