Originally Posted by
Scandinavian traveler
I have. Tried to book PVG-CPH-LHR in Business, PVG-CPH had availability in Business and CPH-LHR had availability in Plus, but it did not show up online. The phone agent explained that I class (business award class) needed to be available for the entire trip, including CPH-LHR for it to book in Business even though the CPH-LHR sector would be in the Plus cabin (and thus F class or whatever the Plus award class is).
That is not a married segment restriction. A married segment is trying to book PVG-CPH-LHR vs PVG-LHR. In this case the agent pulled the rule:
You can combine
travel classes for your outbound and return flights (e.g. outbound in economy and return in business) but you can't combine booking classes in a single direction (e.g. CPH-AMS in economy and AMS-JFK in business).
Which has nothing do to with married segments. And acutally, on numberous occasions I had agents waving this restriction without even mentioning it. Clear case of HUCA.
Funny enough, on ST awards... they say:
You can combine
travel classes for your outbound and return flights (e.g. outbound in economy and return in business) but you can't combine booking classes in a single direction (e.g. CPH-AMS in economy and AMS-JFK in business).
[...]
Our customer service team can help members add connecting flights (
incl. flights in a different booking class) to existing partner award flights if the price of the original booking does not change (domestic or booking in same geographic zone) and if the booking is in the same or a lower booking class as the original booking.