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Married Segment and Up-faring One Segment

Married Segment and Up-faring One Segment

Old Apr 15, 2019, 12:11 pm
  #1  
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Married Segment and Up-faring One Segment

I have purchased BOS-NRT-PVG via AA. PremEco is offered on BOS-NRT segment but no PremEco offered on NRT-PVG. I want to up-fare to PremEco on BOS-NRT segment.

I have HUCA several times and talked with several agents about doing this. Each agent has different reasons/stories as to why I cannot do this, many put me on hold with a rate desk and come back with different reasons/stories. But after several phone calls this seems to be the situation.

BOS-NRT-PVG is on married segment, so cannot just upfare BOS-NRT segment and leave NRT-PVG segment as is. I understand that.

Seems to be upfaring BOS-NRT segment to PremEco and upfareing NRT-PVG to other economy fares which does not have to be married with BOS-NRT segment cannot be done.

Only option which work seems to be construct totally different reservation with BOS-NRT on PremEco and NRT-PVG on Y, cancel existing reservation and purchase new reservation, which will involve cancellation/change fee. No way around avoiding cancellation/change fee.

Does this seems to be right? This is what I gathered after several phone calls to AA.
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 12:31 pm
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I'm not sure I would believe the explanations you have been given – not because they are wrong, but because generally agents don't have any basis for explaining why something is not possible ... the computer says no and that is it.

That said, NRT-PVG must be a codeshare on JAL or a JAL-marketed flight and that may well make upfaring more complex. You don't say what fare / cabin that is booked in.

I think the simplest way forward would be to find a price for what you want to upfare to on aa.com and call and ask about that option explicitly. If the flights you want cannot be found / booked on aa.com then an agent probably can't do it either. It does seem to me that if you can construct a new ticket for the flights / cabins you want then they should be able to upfare it, but that doesn't mean you can find the agent who can do it
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 12:33 pm
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Originally Posted by AlwaysAisle
Only option which work seems to be construct totally different reservation with BOS-NRT on PremEco and NRT-PVG on Y, cancel existing reservation and purchase new reservation, which will involve cancellation/change fee. No way around avoiding cancellation/change fee.

Does this seems to be right? This is what I gathered after several phone calls to AA.
I doubt married segments have anything to do with this. There is no way to just upfare the BOS-NRT without affecting everything else. When you upfare an itinerary you are essentially just booking a new fare in the higher class, AA just waives the change fee. So this option you mention above is correct, you just need to HUCA and get an agent that won't charge you the change fee (by policy you shouldn't pay the change fee since you're moving to a higher class of service).
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 1:29 pm
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BOS-NRT and NRT-PVG are both in Q fare, both flights on JL flight number purchased via AA.com. Entire itinerary is multi city BOS-PVG-HND/NRT-BOS.

Multi city function on AA.com was useless, JAL website multi city was also useless. I even called AA and JAL reservation but both agents could not construct the routing, indicating some segment is not available.

Then went to Google Flights, could construct the routing no problem, able to purchase via AA.com. Only problem was that Google Flight could not construct routing with mixed class, some route in PremEco and some in Eco. If I choose PremEco on Google Flights then segment without Prem Eco come out as class of service not available and not able to book in Eco.

So I decided to purchase flight all in Eco using Google Flights via AA.com, and call in to upfare BOS-NRT segment. Then this is situation when I try to upfare. BOS-NRT segment is the only flight with PremEco offered, all other flights do not have PremEco.

One agent even suggested trying upfare from JAL, but JAL agent told me the ticket was purchased via AA so only AA can upfare. No agent said anything about PVG-HND or NRT-BOS segment has anything to do with this upfare process. All agents seems to imply that BOS-NRT and NRT-PVC is married and that is causing the problem with upfare.

Is it this difficult to purchase multi city ticket? Yes, JL flight number on Q, I will only get 50% EQM. Return NRT-BOS is AA flight on AA flight number NRT-ORD-BOS so will get 100% EQM.

Last edited by AlwaysAisle; Apr 15, 2019 at 1:43 pm
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 2:32 pm
  #5  
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That you were unable to purchase with an agent or could price on google flights suggests to me that what you want was not doable

AA does offer premium economy fares to PVG but a lot of cheaper options seem to have the restriction that travel to/from Asia must be on AA operated flights

If you are within 24 hours of purchase, you should be able to cancel without penalty and then rebook, say, BOS-NRT r/t in PE plus a separate NRT-PVG in economy if you desire. If you want to travel on JL flights, you will likely find it cheaper to buy from JL

Last edited by Dave Noble; Apr 15, 2019 at 2:40 pm
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 2:36 pm
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It is frustrating and, yes, buying multi-city and multi-cabin tickets is very tricky. Google flights will do you multi-city very nicely but won't do multiple cabins and aa.com will let you do multiple cabins but it doesn't do multi-city or partner flights very well at all, though you can book them if you can find them on google (as you found out).

I'm not sure you could have done much better here - I would suggest that you should have put it on hold and called in for PEY, but with partner flights the hold option wouldn't be there. So you're left with making the changes within the first 24 hours so that you cancel for free if it doesn't work.

Also, you really have no idea what the fare might be for what you want, since neither google nor aa.com will quote you a price for it.
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 4:23 pm
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Is it possible that if you could up-fare just the one segment, the price would end up being the same if you had purchased the entire itinerary in PE from the beginning? I know you can pay PE for a flight but end up with mixed cabins, since PE is only available on one leg. So in other words, can you just call back and up-fare the whole itinerary?
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 5:02 pm
  #8  
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BOS-NRT is the only segment which offer PE, all other flights offer Y and J only.

When I called AA and JL I asked multi city booking all in Y and an agent could name book saying NRT-PVC segment do not have availability. However, if I looked up online on AA.com or the U.S. site of jal.co.jp on BOS-PVG segment (both websites multi city segment was useless) there showed availability on NRT-PVG. When I went Google Flights, did multi city on economy showed availability on all segments and I could purchase via AA.com.

Hence, resulted on purchasing multi city using Google Flights via AA.com then tried to upfare.

By chance once I got ExecPlt agent when calling AA.com, she called rate desk and explained to me the same situation about the married segment on BOS-NRT-PVG. Then she went on to construct totally separate reservation with BOS-NRT on PE and all other segments in Y (because all other flights do not offer PE). The agent could price out but the agent told me it is two separate reservation so I have to cancel existing reservation and rebook into new reservation which will subject to cancellation/change fee.

Question is really only option to pay cancellation/change fee? This is after doing several HUCA. How many more HUCAs do I have to do? How come multi city, multi class booking has to be this hard?
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 5:08 pm
  #9  
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That does sound like the only option. The only other option would be if there is a valid premium economy fare for the whole round trip and then to voluntarily downgrade to economy on all the other segments

If you are beyond the 24 hour cancellation period, then indeed, you need to pay the cancellation penalty

It isn't anything to do with it being multi city , it is to do with what fares are offered. Given that attempts to price it out had failed, it could not have been too big a surprise that it wasn't [pssible to make the change
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 5:15 pm
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Originally Posted by Dave Noble
That does sound like the only option. The only other option would be if there is a valid premium economy fare for the whole round trip and then to voluntarily downgrade to economy on all the other segments
Thats basically what I was trying to say...
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 6:01 pm
  #11  
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Originally Posted by Beachfun71


Thats basically what I was trying to say...
Given that the OP is booked on JL flights , looking at EF, the fare looks like it would be very expensive since most discount AA PE fares seem to require that travel be on AA operated services
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 8:16 pm
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What I know is that JL E fares book into K when E is not available. Can OP maybe try to ask AA to book E class for BOS-NRT and K class for NRT-PVG. This way I believe the rate desk should be able to price the whole journey
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