Adam Smith

To price it separately, they have to book it separately. Because the segments are married, they can't be booked separately.

SilverChris

It would be easier to help if you shared more details, like your actual routing and airline(s) instead of the cryptic AAA-CCC.

But when it comes to awards, it's up to the ticketing carrier to price the married segments, no? For example, LH can release a married CDG-FRA-LAX but at the end of the day it's Aeroplan that's going to price it. LH is getting paid for CDG-FRA-LAX regardless of whatever AC charges its member.

canadiancow

And in that case, LH has released I space (i.e. "priced it") on CDG-FRA-LAX, but not CDG-FRA or FRA-LAX.

pentiumvi

Don't actually have planned routing and airlines, just a generic question.
But I thought as you did, that it's up to AC to charge us however it wants, as long as AC is buying the married segments completely from LH.

Fair enough, that's a valid point of view as well. Would have thought AC could book them together, but just charge members separately through possibly a manual process.

Adam Smith

No, because then agents could just charge whatever they felt like. They could give discounts to whoever they wanted to, or make genuine miscalculations, forget a zero, etc. It's an absolute nightmare from a controls and audit perspective.

If the computer says the price is X, the price is X. If the computer gives the "wrong" result (e.g. your earlier comments about bounds), it's sometimes possible to feed it the information in different ways to generate the "right" result, but the system still has to set the price.

pentiumvi

Right, that makes sense. In an ideal world I suppose there could have been allowance for some sort of manual intervention, but given how things have been, you're likely right in that it'll be down to computer says "X"

Adam Smith

It's possible to create a manual override, but who gets that authority, and what are the parameters for exercising it? It's almost something they wouldn't give to a front-line agent, so it's a supervisor or even someone a level up the chain, and there still need to be controls and audit to make sure it's not abused.

If they did have such a process, I doubt they would use it in your example anyway. You're essentially looking to exploit a loophole by classifying a connection as separate bounds. That's all well and good if you can get the computer to do it, which you sometimes can, but since the segments are married, you can't. Why would they go through the hassle of letting you price something as separate bounds if it can't be booked as such? You're just asking for a gift of 15K points or whatever, and I would expect them to tell you to pound sand.