tayaran

Hi Everyone, pretty new to this points game, hoping to get some advice. I am trying to book YYZ - CPT using my Aeroplan or AMEX Canada points for Feb 18 - March 4 (+/- 3 Days) in J class. It seems Aeroplan doesnt have any J seats available at all for any of the dates. Any ideas? Open to transferring Amex CA points somewhere else .
Thanks in Advance

Smiley90

Do you have a time machine that goes half a year back?

Your problem is that there's very few *A airlines that fly into CPT and even fewer award seats, most of which were likely taken when the schedule first opens. Your best bet is finding availability on Ethiopian and being flexible with airports - e.g. searching flights out of YUL/ORD/JFK as well as searching for flights into JNB and then adding domestic legs on one or the other (or both) sides. There was a deal posted on the premium deals forum here maybe last week for YYZ-SA, so it might make sense paying cash for it as well.

allbrosca

Try searching somwhere you can get to CPT from and piecing it together. I recently booked to CPT in February. I had to search YYZ-JNB and then JNB-CPT and phone it in. Ended up with YYZ-DOH-AUH-JNB-CPT on AC,EY,EY and SA. On the way home I was able to find CPT-ADD-YYZ on ET, 100,000 points and $194.71 in taxes and fees using one of my priority rewards.
I just checked and you should have no problem finding somwthing through ADD on ET to JNB and connecting to CPT on SA.

grandgourmand

You have to look at individual legs and piece together your itinerary and hope that the flights can be booked by an agent.

For fun, was just looking at a March 3rd/4th return.
March 3rd CPT-JNB-AUH
March 4 AUH-ORD-YYZ

A bit annoying routing, with layovers. But it can be done...can look at other options too.

CdnFlier

Just posting as a bit of a vent having tried to book a flight from Canada to Europe direct with the call centre today. There were a few hops in Canada required due to the origin so the website wouldn't pull up many routings, but I could find availability on ITA/Google Flights/random online TAs so I thought it would be no problem.

However, clearly there are lots of very new call centre agents, even tried HUCA a couple of times but kept getting agents that couldn't lookup flights by flight number or routing, weren't able to find inventory, and then expressed surprise that anything worked in the end. Even with some partner flights, an agent kept insisting that one airline (TAP) wasn't even in Star Alliance (eventually they checked with ticketing or someone...).

Anyway, after lots of patience I got something booked, but I probably should have just booked it through a random website as it was quoting out cheaper and would have been less headaches. It's amazing how much of a difference an experienced agent can make to the booking process.

Smiley90

Are you talking about a cash booking? Because this thread is about Aeroplan stopovers...

CaiusJuliusCeasar

Hey everyone! Trying to get 3 family members from YUL to HKT one way Y somewhere between Dec.17 and 23 (yeah I know...). Had originally figured out YUL-EWR-VIE-AUH-HKT (the key here was to get them to AUH so they could go directly to HKT without going through BKK. Until this morning, there was 5 Etihad AUH-HKT seats available everyday between dec. 17 and 23. A few hours later, nothing was available anymore. All gone. How can you explain this ? Algorithm just cut all the seats ? Anyway, any inputs / help / alternate strategies would be appreciated here. Thanks in advance!

grandgourmand

Well, that random stuff happens sometimes.

Any options going in the other direction? Make your way to SIN (SQ has several flights and is usually pretty generous with Y availability) or ICN (OZ)

shayaanl

Trying too book this as a one-way from YYZ to LCA in J. The agent says that she gets the response fare not found when she inputs it into her system. The says the issue is backtracking from Venice to Munich. Could that 200-mile flight really be an issue?

zam

Since you are including yyz-yul you obviously have ac metal and must follow ac routing rules. If your transatlantic yul-zrh is on lx then I suspect that if you price it ex that yyz-yul leg you will be fine.

pentiumvi

In addition to because you have an AC leg, it could also be the ZRH-VCE-MUC segment that's tripping you up.

Supposedly, the rules aren't that you cannot exceed 100% distance from your origin/destination, but 100% of any city pair in your route.

So in your case, ZRH-MUC is ~162miles, but ZRH-VCE-MUC is ~425 miles.

shayaanl

Tried it without the AC leg and it didn't work so you're probably right about ZRH-VCE-MUC being the issue. Thanks!

I think I'll book yyz-yul-zrh-muc-vce-ath-lca instead. If the AC flight is still an issue, then I'll proceed without it.

kangarooflyer88

For the poster with the YYZ > LCA trip they are trying to book - are there any stopovers involved or is it simply a direct one-way trip to LCA? If you are not then per the Aeroplan flight reward policy the itinerary appears to be valid. Namely, the itinerary contains no more than 6 flights per direction of travel and the chosen routing is less than double the straight-line (as the crow flies) route between the two cities. However, there are two things that I think could potentially hold up this booking. First, there is a layover somewhere that exceeds 24 hours or (and most likely) the inclusion of the Air Canada segment forces the routing rules to take more strenuous retail fare routing rules.

Hence, if I was the OP, the logical next steps I would take would be to first look at the itinerary you have in mind, noting the connection times involved. If any exceed 24 hours you need to get that sorted out first. Second, if for some reason that doesn't work, try and find an itinerary without any Air Canada flights (i.e. a partner only flight). There are a number of airlines that might make this happen such as United, Lufthansa, Singapore Air, or even Etihad.

-RooFlyer88

shayaanl

It indeed has no stopovers. It seems like ZRH-VCE-MUC being over 200% of the distance of ZRH-MUC is the issue.

shayaanl

Does anyone have experience with GF married segment availability? Trying to book ATH-LCA on Sep. 23 on GF in J. When I search ATH-LCA, nothing comes up but when I search YYZ-LCA on the 22nd, YYZ-ATH-LCA shows up with ATH-LCA operated by GF on the 23rd. Expertflyer shows that there are four award seats available in J on the GF flight. Would an agent be able to attach that GF ATH-LCA flight to an itinerary like YYZ-YUL-ZRH-ATH-LCA?