boxedlunch

Trying to book a one way award ticket (PHL-AUS on 30 Mar) using some orphaned Aegean miles. A Star Alliance search on Award Nexus showed a connecting itinerary available (UA1765+UA1153 via IAH). United's website showed the identical itinerary as available as a saver award. Everything looked promising, right?

Aegean's website indicated no award availability for PHL-AUS...thinking this was a website issue that a real human could fix, I called Aegean for help. The Aegean representatives (4 separate reps) told me that there's no availability from PHL-AUS, though two of them subsequently were able to confirm there was space on the two connecting flights in economy...if I book two separate one-way tickets. They were insistent that they could not manually put the two flights together on one itinerary as a single one way trip with a layover.

In what world does this make sense and is there a workaround?

Tokyoite

In what world does this make sense?
In the world of award tickets. You get what you get, not what you want or what "should be bookable".
You of course have the sensible choice to buy a cash ticket for exactly what you want.

Is there a workaround?
UA search is inaccurate for searching what UA has released to other star alliance partners. It typically has more awards!
Always double/triple check with other star alliance partners.
There is no availability on 3/30 for awards space for star alliance partners. However, there is award space on 3/31. Confirmed on several star alliance partners ANA AMC, Lifemiles and Asiana.
An option is to change your departure by 1 day.
see post below for work-around. You would need to call A3 M&B to book this, since it doesnt show on the website. However, unlike the 30th, you have confirmed that the space is there for the 31st.

Chiller3333

The flights on the 31st can be found on the website of Aegean.
For some weird reason they don't show up in the 30-day overview (only 03/24 does).
But when clicking 03/24 and then +1week, you get to 03/31 and see all available flights.

boxedlunch

Thanks for trying to help. To clarify, I was looking at 30 Mar, not 31 Mar. Also, I'm no noob (though haven't really been on FT for about 5 years). UPDATE: Now there's availability on the A3 award search at 12,5000 miles...but when trying to book it prices out at 25,000 miles. Whyyyyyyy?

Here's are screenshots of Award Nexus (using AC), UA, ANA all confirming availability for my desired itinerary. Additionally, screenshots of the A3 website showing individual segment availability. Apologies for the huge images, couldn't figure out how to resize in the editor.


Award Nexus screen cap

United screen cap

ANA screen cap

A3 PHL IAH leg

A3 IAH AUS leg


A3 PHL AUS is suddenly available!

A3 Booking engine then re-prices the trip. Ugh.

boxedlunch

Update to the update...

Called A3 and was able to book today...sort of. Here's how it went down.

1. Called A3 at 833-732-8158
2. Let the CSR know I'd like to book a non-return award ticket
3. CSR confirmed my Miles and Bonus account info & asked for desired travel dates/destinations
4. I told her 30 Mar PHL to AUS
5. She found the itinerary I was looking for (UA1765-UA1153)
6. When trying to book the ticket, it improperly priced at 25,000 miles on her end (same as online).
7. I asked her whether a non-return star alliance ticket should price at half of the 25k award...she said yes and put me on hold to discuss with some other desk.
8. After returning from her discussion, she told me she could book the ticket at 12,500 miles, would waive the €20 phone fee, and would charge the €5.19 to my CC to book. I agreed.
9. Looks like the ticket was successfully booked and I just received a confirmation email.

Chiller3333

I mentioned the 31st since that's what Tokyoite found.
I've read about people having the issue with prices jumping to segment-by-segment pricing before.
But since booking by phone seems to be the way out I wouldn't call this "sort of" being able to book.
Coming back to your issue, it is important that the itinerary can be found as a single connecting flight and not 2 separate flights.
I mentioned this in another thread already, Aegean will only ticket awards that are in Starnet (?) as a single connecting itinerary and will not piece together individual flights.
Obviously, this has nothing to do with the pricing issue though.