I knew I was pushing it time-wise, and in season award tix are hard to get, but I did successfully get decent connections on a AA europe award for July from Boston with only 3 months to go til travel!!

Was able to grab part of the reservation and put it on hold, and then I called back regularly and suffered thru the phone process to eventually tweak and tailor it to be closer to what I wanted. Dates and times and partner carriers were flexible and I was even ok with connections and possible alternative airports where needed. But in the end, I had on hold a very close rendition of what we wanted to fly. (with AA you can do that for a couple weeks sometimes and that's SOOOO cool! they are the only ones left who really do it that way!) I called back once more and voila! The waiting and planning paid off. Got the best flights we could get, only one connection (which our trip with them would require anyway because of the destination as it relates to our departure city) and booked the reservation just yesterday!

Key to doing this: Patience, flexibility, understanding, being nice to CSRs, having time to sit on the phone, chit chat, creative suggestions (we were almost prepared to connect thru Istanbul just to fly BOS-AMS and back!) and knowing something of who partners with who and how.

I think AA was really good in this case. Their int'l agents also know what they are doing. Let's hope they never cut those jobs!

MM