A friend of mine is about to do a LONE4 around-the-world trip. Part of that trip is: HNL-LAX-ORD-MSN (Madison)-ORD-LHR on AA (ORD-MSN-ORD is American Eagle). Both visits to ORD are just transits, not stopovers.

I was hoping to use one of my eVIPs to upgrade him HNL-LAX, LAX-ORD and ORD-LHR.

I called the ExPlat desk twice today and was told that I could not use one eVIP for the three upgrades. They said that by going ORD-MSN-ORD my friend was "changing the direction" of travel, making it a round-trip. I asked whether I would be allowed to upgrade the three mainline flights if the side-trip to Madison was removed and they said yes. When I questioned the logic both put me on hold to check their answer (don't know with whom) before coming back and confirming their initial response.

This is my first attempt to use an eVIP, and my knowledge of the rules is limited to what I have read on FT. So at this stage all I can ask is whether what the agents said matches the experiences FTers have had, or whether I should be allowed to use the eVIP on all three segments.

It just doesn't make sense to me that an around-the-world which passes through the same transit airport twice suddenly counts as a round-trip. If it turns out that this is a technicality and prevents the eVIP being used for all three, my friend will probably re-route the flight to avoid one visit to ORD (although that seems to create different problems - namely a long AE flight) or purchase a separate ORD-MSN-ORD ticket. On the other hand if it appears that both ExPlat agents were wrong I will call back and try to get the "right" answer.

I am grateful for any assistance which may be forthcoming.