What's a circle trip? Last night I called the promotions department with my AmEx companion cert. in hand. The certificate says that circle trips are permitted but not stopovers. I asked if an ATL/ABQ/Bozeman/ATL routing would be permitted (seemed like a circle to me) using certificate as I need to spend time in both Bozeman and MT on same trip. She entered the data and said it would work. Today chking itinerary before purchasing I noted a date was wrong, so I called to correct and was told that the itinerary could not be booked because it involved stopover in ABQ. I then spoke with a supervisor in Customer Care who said the same. I asked--well, then what is a circle trip? Pause. The response--stopovers aren't permitted. What's a circle trip? Longer pause, then placed on hold; I then received an unintelligible reply suggesting that a circle trip had to do with using different airlines (I'm sure that would work on a Delta companion cert?!) or different routings BUT NO STOPOVERS. Anyone know what a circle trip is?

Remarkably, this conversation was preceded within 24 hours by a separate similar incident in which I booked an ATL-PVR trip. The agent booked me on an award ticket by running the return PVR-LAX-ATL, which allowed me to leave PVR 7.5 hours later than the only other flight available. Very little difference existed in travel time from routing he booked vs. routing PVR/Mexico City/ATL. When I called back to discuss outbound date, I was told by Customer Care that the first agent should never have booked the return trip as he did because that was not a permissible routing for an award ticket (PVR return cannot go through LAX; must go through Mexico City). Two days, two itineraries booked by Delta agents, and two itineraries ultmately shot down by Customer Care. I am going to call this evening and see what version I get.