canadiancow

I don't understand anyone's rationale for being remotely surprised. If everyone booked two tickets, load factors would be at most 50%. It's not surprising why AC would want to prevent that.

YHZ_Flyer

I had two latitude tickets from FLL-YYZ back in January on the 4:30 and 9:20pm flights. I didn’t know which flight I would need to take for work reasons. Ended up taking the 4:30 flight, the agent laughed at me because the later one was confirmed in J while the earlier one was not, but she didn’t seem to have an issue with it. She asked if I would like her to cancel it and I said I would deal with it myself. I cancelled the later one myself when pushing back from the gate.

FlY2XS

Further pulling at the string, maybe load factor is one of the triggers for the cancellation bots to activate? In this case flight A was dropped, so flight B is likely to get full very quickly. Clearing space might be the first step in the contingency program. Clearly she didn't make the first cut of passengers reassigned to flight B.
If flight A and B are both half full, likely AC don't care if you cancel one last minute.

canadiancow

But if you're doing this well in advance, you're pushing up the lowest available fare, which might cause a prospective passenger to choose another option.

SFO-YYZ goes up around $40 per fare class (within a brand), 2 months out. It wouldn't take too many duplicate bookings to push the price up $100, such that someone might opt for a competitor.

starlink

I have booked the following round trip journey booked in economy:
Departure: YYZ - FRA - ZAG
Return: ZAG - AMS - YYZ

The departure leg is done. The return is operated by Croatia airlines and Air Canada.

There are no award redemptions to match the full return leg, however, I can book the AMS - YYZ trip on the same day in J for a reasonable amount of Aeroplan points.
Is it possible to hold 2 tickets and scan both boarding passes for the AC AMS-YYZ leg? If not, can customer service "merge" the award booking to replace the economy ticket on the existing itinerary?

SilverChris

This won’t work. If you want to book the J award ticket you’ll have to cancel the remainder of your original ticket. Otherwise, you’ll very likely have one ticket cancelled behind the scenes, and it won’t necessarily be the one you want.

And no, separate bookings can’t be “merged” like that.

Brendacruise

Im Scheduled on a flight Vancouver-Toronto Toronto-Frankfurt Frankfurt-Rome. Is it okay if I decide to go Frankfurt-venice instead (only carryon). I would be booked on 2 flights at same time and I have read the computer will cancel both flights. This is a one way ticket. I have another one way ticket return.

YYCCL3

This is most likely a question better answered in the Lufthansa forum, since FRA-VCE/FCO is presumably a flight operated by LH. AC won't have anything to do with it even if it was ticketed by AC.

Adam Smith

There's a reasonable likelihood that one of these tickets will be cancelled if they're both booked through AC and have the same passenger on them. And you won't be able to predict or control which gets cancelled.

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My guess is @Brendacruise has booked this through Aeroplan, in which case AC will absolutely be aware of it.

FRA-VCE and FRA-FCO will both be on LH. The interesting question is even if FRA-VCE is ticketed by LH as you've hypothesised, since (a) LH is the operator of both segments, and/or (b) both AC and LH are on Amadeus, and will it get flagged and possibly cancelled by one airline or the other? I think there's a good chance it will, in either case.

canadiancow

I've had UA cancel overlapping UA segments booked through Aeroplan substantially more (multiple times) than I've had AC do it (zero).

Far Siren

I've got an Aeroplan redemption on SQ and due to volatile travel plans, would like to book a revenue flexible J ticket on the same date on Air Canada. Routings are very different (SQ is an Asia to Europe award while the revenue ticket would be Asia to Canada). Obviously SQ will have no knowledge of the AC ticket, but would AC cancel one of these tickets since my AP number will be on both bookings departing on the same date?

canadiancow

I have never had a case where a flight was cancelled by anyone other than the operating airline, but that's no guarantee.

vancouver25k

I made two overlapping bookings last week, a non-stop flight from AC, a second PNR (two segments, UA then AC) from UA. I put my AC FF on both. Today, I noticed that the UA segment on the UA booking was absent from that PNR. The AC segment was still there - none of the segments overlapped in time with the AC PNR, but the UA segment and the non-stop AC segment were close and definitely impossible to fly.

I preferred the stop for extra SQM, so I called UA. Agent went away, and came back saying the segment was cancelled because I had a conflicting itinerary. She was very helpful and said that she could reinstate the segment if I cancelled the other flight, and waited on the phone while I went and cancelled the AC PNR. A minute later, she had my UA PNR restored to as I had booked it, and waited on the phone while I confirmed that it was done.

flyingcrooked

I have flights from YUL to the Caribbean booked on points for March 9 to 16, a Saturday to Saturday. My SO now has to work that week so I'll be cancelling those flights, but to save $800 I want to wait until I hit SE later this year. Meanwhile, kids and I would like to fly to YYC instead for skiing. If we book March 9 to 16 the dates would clash, it would be impossible to fly both itineraries. I'm wondering if I booked the YUL-YYC flight from, say, the 7th to the 14th, would that still be a clash in AC's eyes? Obviously the itineraries would still be flyable, we'd just have to get back from YYC to YUL on the 8th, and back from the Caribbean to YYC on the 13th, which could be done by other means.

Challenge is I can't get free cancellations until November when I hit SE but want to book on points before the price shoots up, so wondering if there's a way to finesse that. Any insights appreciated, thanks.

Jazzman23

Not much around it if you booked on a fare that comes with a change fee. If you paid for the fare with no fees you wouldn't have this problem but you know that already.

Maybe when you are very close to Super elite status call in and see if an agent will waive the fee. You'd have to tell them how many SQD, SQM's you have and give them a current booking to prove that you will hit that status soon.

Otherwise not much else you can do.