maokh

The AS website used to list all the valid partner destinations available from the main reservation page. It seems like this is completely gone. While i can play fun games like "does AS have this partner destination loaded or not?" .. only to find it to be invalid or perhaps not even remotely competitively priced, i find it a bit annoying.

Also, can/will AS ever put in non north american destinations?

missydarlin

are you talking about paid travel or award travel?

For the partner destinations ... its only going to be competitively priced if we offer a codeshare in that market. Otherwise, its priced point to point, and you are paying two separate fares between our cities and "their" cities.

I'm not sure why the city list was removed, but I've heard rumors that it will return, or return in a more user-friendly form.

International Award travel is in the works, but purchased tickets have to be issued by the international carrier...

doog

So is it safe to assume that partner award travel will (some day soon, maybe?) be available to be booked via the website? I don't see how else you could do an international award... but maybe I'm being obtuse.

maokh

Thanks. Yes, this is for paid travel. would be nice to see the partner city list again!

missydarlin

Domestic Partner award travel has been available via the website for quite a while. International Partner Awards are in the works.

maokh

Is there some rule or good reason why AS limits their domestic (and does not do international) ticketing?

I was looking to book SEA-SYD/BNE, for example, and keep my travel on AS metal/EQM partners (with maybe a QF hop in there). I was annoyed with delta.com sites routing of me from SEA-SLC-LAX-SYD....when i could have just taken alaska to LAX.

missydarlin

Yes

Its an IATA standard that the international carrier issue the ticket.

eponymous_coward

Domestic partner travel can't always be booked off the website. I know DL/NW and AA can, but CO, not so much (you have to call the partner desk for that).

beckoa

Why does AS not allow the booking of other airlines routes on its website... if they don't serve the city pair? For example, inter-island fares... KOA-MKK... it says to call AS to book such a ticket IIRC... Is it codeshare's only? I don't think this is required, but might be...

missydarlin

It does NOT say call AS to book the ticket. We can't book it unless there is at least one segment on us or its a codeshare.

beckoa

Interesting... I think they have changed their message (per a quick search I tried )

brarrr

I was looking at a similar routing... and since I think you were asking a different question than what people have been answering.. You CAN get a ticket sea-lax-syd w/ AS then DL leg... it's just ~100 more than the sea-slc-lax-syd it took a while to find it but they did offer it..

One would think you could get it cheaper though. I will probably have to book such a thing in a few months, and will likely do separate tickets and just get into LA a day early

ANC

Ok why do some cities show up only in the "partner fare column"?

Why do some cities not served by AS metal show up with several fare options besides just partner fare coach?

And then why cant you search for F class fares for some partner destination by schedule(the ones that only have the partner fare option when searching Y...see question 1) and only have the ridiculous by price option with routing and times preselected for you that are inconvenient?

missydarlin

RASMguy may do a better job at explaining this, but this is my understanding of how it works
Basically, it depends on the nature of the codeshare agreement.

When it shows up in the normal AS fare columns, it means AS has its own fare filed in that market (like SEA-MSP), we probably fly there ourselves, and our codeshare agreement allows us to to use another carrier to get you to that destination.

When its in the partner category:

We only show the lowest fare available, which is generally going to preclude F, unless thats all thats left.

Its likely a local market codeshare (meaning we don't fly there at all (SEA-ATL, SEA-SLC) but we codeshare with that airline and have an agreement to sell those flights as ours....but its THEIR filed fare.

Or we are getting you somewhere using two separate fares that are broken at the connection city.

For example, in the SEA-BOS market, you can buy a SEA-LAX-BOS route with a 5 hour layover, using AS/AA under the partner column. If you look at the fare rules, we are selling you an AS fare SEA-LAX, and an AA fare LAX-BOS.

I don't know that I've seen F offered on codeshares. We would obviously prefer that you book our F, and the partner carrier would obviously prefer that you buy directly from them so they don't have to give us a cut.

ANC

you can in the multi city option but it only comes up sorted by price