Married Segments?
 

Happy New Year everyone! Please help!

I have issued a ticket from TPE-HKG-LAX-HKG-TPE on D class ticket from CX TPE. (I have a confirmed reservation for the 9th of Jan from TPE-HKG-LAX on D Class)

Late night on the 1st of Jan when TPE Reservation office was closed, I was searching online and found there was a seat available from HKG-LAX on the 5th of Jan (the day I need to go), so I made a booking through CX HK Reservations. When I made this booking, there were no seats available from TPE-HKG on D Class, so the agent just made the booking HKG-LAX with a seperate record locator.

Now (today) there are seats available on the 5th of January from TPE-HKG, but I'm having no luck getting CX HK Reservations to modify the HKG-LAX reservation to add the TPE-HKG flight, so that I can use that locator on my ticket.

Now I just need a way to marry the two segments, CX are somehow just not giving me any New Year love and are adamant that I can't do this..

Someone on FT must have a solution for this!! Please help!!

That's what 'married segments' mean. The flights have to be sold as a pair and not singularly. If you want that seat from HKG, then you have to buy it as HKG-LAX. You cannot marry the two on two seperate bookings. You have to basically do all bookings on one PNR.

You need to waitlist for your preferred flight on your original PNR and cancel the other booking which you are holding.

That is why CX chose AMADEUS GDS. Airlines using this system also have the married segments situation - ie LH, OS, SQ, BA, QF.

There is a way to choose a single segment from availability but it takes a travel agent to do it.. so you have to next time allow a TA to book your flights.

Thank you but still confusing...
 

Thanks for replying - I'm clear about why using a TA would solve this. I would assume that there is no way a TA can now take over the booking which CX has made?

I can't understand why CX can't add a sector to the existing PNR for the TPE-HKG sector on the existing PNR, the return flights are wide open, so I would make the return flights on the same booking as well then just give them my ticket number. Are there any magic words I can say to CX to get them to do this? If I was able to make a booking from HKG-LAX, surely I should be able to add flights to this booking?

Alternatively, do you know if there is a way to get them to extend the deadline so i can fly early on the 5th to Taipei and try winging it with the checkin desk to use my booking for the flight and go standby TPE-HKG?

There must be some solution - I really must get to LAX on the 5th, but there are absolutely no seats on any class on CX.

I know CX is cracking down on this where the TA is making 2 separate bookings to circumvent this.

have i solved it?
 

Before I call CX, I need to understand if this logic works:

I just checked and found that you can buy a ticket SGN-HKG-LAX-xHKG-SGN from CX Vietnam, which allows a stopover in HKG

If this is correct, then I should essentially be able to use my existing reservation from HKG-LAX as it would then not be "married" to the previous sector?

If this is the case, then would the reservations department not HAVE to amend my reservation to add SGN-HKG and LAX-xHKG-SGN to the PNR so that I can apply the ticket to the PNR?

Are you flying from TPE or SGN? I am confused about your explanation here.:confused:

No, no, and thrice no. "Point of Sale" HK (so your HKG-LAX booking) will have different availability to POS SGN. You need to make a new booking as if you are buying the ticket in SGN (e.g. online or through reservations)

Segments with stopovers are still married.

About the only way to do it would be to add another airline's segments. I.e. you could add a CI flight for the HKG-TPE vv bits. Of course, your D ticket is unlikely to let you fly CI, so you would need to buy new tcket

Uhm, there are, you have a booking as you have said HKG-LAX. Best solution is to refund the TPE-LAX return ticket and buy a HKG-LAX vv ticket.

I echo peasant's post.

You don't understand what 'married' segments mean or do.

If you have an existing HKG-LAX booking, and you check seperately that there are seats on SGN or TPE to HKG and then you go to your booking and try to add that segment in, and find out that 1) the seat you thought had seats now suddenly show ZERO availability, and that 2) if the agents say that the seats are there but when they try to do the booking, the segment comes back 'UN' which means Unable to Confirm.

This is where Point of Sale comes in. The revenue from SGN / TPE to LAX is less than HKG-LAX so the priority goes to strictly HKG-LAX flights. Hence you saw the availability. If you try to get the seats from SGN or TPE, then the point of sale will be those cities and CX will give you seats only there are seats to be sold all the way through from SGN or TPE.. or for that matter, all other cities within Asia connecting to LAX. So its not just SGN or TPE you're fighting for seats but rest of asia, ie from BKK, SIN. ex-SIN has higher yields for CX so ex-SIN to LAX on the same flight as yours will show availability.

You cannot merge one reservation to another.. and it is very problematic for an agent to take over a CX made reservation. It is possible but problematic and even so, the whole thing will still go down to where the ticket is being issued and the point of sale issue comes up. If you cancel the HKG-LAX, you will see that your SGN/TPE-HKG miraculously apprear available. But then your HKG-LAX would have disappeared.

In the days of paper tickets, yes you can book one reservation on one PNR and another somewhere else. But with e-tickets, everything has got to be contained in ONE PNR otherwise the ticket won't print.

The point really is not even married segment issues. Its' called O&D revenue management. They are calculating there is more money to be made not opening the availability for the requested booking.

Point of sale is just one of many components of it in play.

And from your username I guess you know alot about it...;)

Yep, that would be true. Married segments are simply a programming logic in the reservation system that allows the airline to control inventory based on what the revenue management system says is the best option for availability in maxing revenue across the network.

How does standby work with this?
 

Thanks, although much to my dismay, it's very clear now!

On this type of itinerary, how does standby work? For example if I show up to the airport at TPE, with a married segment ticket no stopover allowed, will the airline wait until the LAX flight is clear before letting me board the TPE-HKG flight? Or is it just not possible?

If it is possible, when I fly HKG-TPE try to turnaround on the TPE-HKG-LAX can I standby airside, or will I have to clear immigration in TPE and standby landside?

From experience they tend to confirm you the latest 5-7 days before departure unless it is really full on the long haul sector.

what happens to waitlist on married segment flights?

I have HND-HKG-TPE. Originally it was waitlisted as married segment flight. The segments never cleared.

Today agent was playing around with my booking (ticketing agent, not the clueless MPC agents). She basically said somehow HKD-HKG cleared so she confirmed this first, but waiting HKG-TPE to come through. I thought married segment must clear as a package, not individually. Now i'm waiting for the HKG-TPE to clear, and she said once each of legs are confirmed she can "marry them back" again. Is this true???

I'm worried that each of underlying is cleared as Tokyo Point of Sale HND-HKG and HKG point of sale HKG-TPE such that they won't allow me to marry this.

As a side question also, say my HKG-TPE never clear. If I show up for my HND flight before my HKG-TPE is cleared, will I be denied boarding at Tokyo? It's supposed to be HND-HKG-TPE but HKG-TPE has 24 hour stopover allowed. I wonder if I can just show up for my HND-HKG flight without confirmed HKG-TPE?

Needless to say I will be forfeiting HKG-TPE. I got this ticket 75% discount to straight HKG-HND. Thanks CX for the arbitrage opportunity.

The agent is trying to bypass the system and from experience will make it worst. Just keep the WL, it should clear from experience.

I ddn't ask her to play around. In fact I was trying to change flights to NRT-HKG-TPE instead and she involuntarily deleted the HND-HKG leg (I saw from MMB website) after which she confirmed HND-HKG independently, so it wasn't me asking her to bypass with loophole.

I can't be bothered to go back to tell them to retry from start. - so if my HKG-TPE clears later does this actually become a Married Segment?

well good luck. I had a similar experience once and around 24-48 hours before the flight, someone from CX called me and claimed they made a mistake and shouldn'e have confirmed one of the sectors. (this was back in CUPID days) but then I argued with them and said it is not my problem and clearly there are inventory available in the class. As a pax I shouldn't be expected to understand the logsitics and details of marry segements.

So at the end the agent got control to release the seats for me.

Prob in your situation, I will let it be now and see what happens.

can i please find out where did you make the original booking (who waitlist your booking) and where / who you phoned?

cheers

original booking made by TPE CX. they know what they are doing.

amendment done by MPC HK (Cantonese line) who screwed up my married segment return.

had to call TPE CX to fix the issue.

Wanted to change the married segment, called Tokyo ticketing. this is when the HND-HKG was cleared alone and HKG-TPE is waitlisted. they claim it's ok like this, because 2 segments will be married. (which, as above, I doubt)

That us exactly the problem. U shouldn't have contact MPO as the agent r not versed in these technical limits.

Yes. Even some reservation agents don't really know what should be done. My understanding is also that it makes the subsequent segment even harder to clear.

just an update. so i found availability in waitlisted flight (hkg tpe leg which i dump anyways) so both segments cleared clean. i still believe agent mistakenly cleared my first leg on its own i checked married segment aailability and still dont see it.. flight is in week so i report back if i have trouble but doubt it. will print online boarding pass and try to board at last minute as if everything is ok. they can either delay the entire flighr to go through my tickets or just let me board and move on

Just because you see availability on an O&D doesn't mean that you will get the seats. Airlines use POS and married segment with the seat inventory to maximise their revenue for their flight.

From reading various posts on FT, the travellers here don't seem to understand how airline revenue management operates.

Sometimes, I get a good laugh at reading some of the posts of FT'ers.

Glad we amuse you

keep up the good laugh. i have confirmed tickets donno how that was obtained but bottomline I managed to secure a same flight at 75% discount to what ex HK is. obviously something fell apart on CX's internal system for this to come through.

after-report. so for the flights where I suspect married-segments of HND-HKG-TPE got confirmed individually and subsequently 'married back' as per my post above, I had no issue at normal check in counters at HND. all normal.

Post arrival whilst I waited for my bags, I called CX ticketing to cancel my HK-TPE leg no issue. The 'helpful' agent at ticketing insisted they rebook me on other HK-TPE flight (even ticket restriction doesn't allow) once again, they always offer this. I insisted my plan changed so just want to cancel booking for mom. And Hanged up.

Now that makes me wonder what happens if I moved my HK-TPE to future date (beyond ticket restriction), and show up for flight in HKG. Are they going to charge me ticket differential? I never wanted to try in fear of they asking me to repay HK$15k I saved by doing ex-TPE... if anyone has experience I'd like to know...

U can't as the ticket would allow u to move to a different date

thanks. Your response further confirms to me/reasures that I will never get charged the price differential by throwing away the last segment.

Rational: if they are offering to move dates, it means they don't see the ticket restrictions straight away on the call. They only check ticket condition when I indeed ask them to move at which point they realize it's a problem and potentially challenge me or collect fee difference.

So as long as I say "I will rebook when my dates are firm, I don't need booking for now" which isn't a lie technically,, they just think I will rebook at one stage. And the the ticket which was married etc etc will just lapse and no one knows. They make their own assumption so I'm not liable for this.

Good observation and very useful thanks. And if you ever do try to change date, please let us know the results :D

FWIW last month I told SYD check-in desk that I will check in and pick up my boarding pass for HKG-TPE (which was on arrival day +1) when in HKG. No problems encountered.

Yes, however there can always be the risks of what we discussed before for throwing away the last segment consistently

Has anyone experienced a problem with waitlisting for "married segments"?

I have purchased a ticket for TPE / HKG / LHR / HKG / TPE in D Class. The ticket can be rebooked without any penalty. The outbound flights are CX565 on Day 0 and then CX253 on Day 1.

Now I want to change the outbound flights to CX565 on Day -5 and then CX253 on Day -4. The agent at first told me that D Class was available for both flights so no problem, but he later said he could not change the flights which I guessed (and he confirmed) was because of "married segments" issues. (Expert Flyer was showing high availability in D Class for CX565 on Day -5 but low availability in D Class for CX253 on Day -4.)

So I asked to be put on the waitlist for CX565 on Day -5 and then CX253 on Day -4. After being put on hold for more than 20 minutes, the agent said he could not do it and neither could his colleagues. He said that, in order to waitlist, I would have to cancel the flights for the old dates first or else change the flights only once the new dates were available. In other words I could not waitlist in the normal sense.

What I would have to do, the agent explained, was to call back regularly to check availability, which would be a pain to say the least.

Please can anyone shed some light on this problem?

Did you search you flights on EF per sector? it should show the same amount of D class if you search it correctly.

were you able to find D availability on EF for both CX565 AND CX253 on the day you want? if one sector is unavailable CX would not confirm the outbound journey.

unfortunately that's the problem of ex TPE married segment tickets. Even if underlying "D" fares is available for both flight for POS of HK, the married segment "D" for POS (point of sale) Taiwan may not be available. Reason is simple, the ex TPE "married segment" D-fares are lot cheaper, so they don't release it easily. I would assume you are close to your flight date - i find that ex TPE availability is extremely good for 1mth out but closer to dates you start having these problems.

One thing i did was (refer my post earlier) I waitlisted seperately and somehow they both cleared seperately and I was good to go by "re-marrying both segments". I'm not sure how agent did it but I didn't question - it sound like unknowledable agent just went ahead to confirm underying segments on its own and force merger it... I didn't have problem at check in either and I dumped my last HKG-TPE segment.

thanks CX for all the arbitrage opportunity ex TPE once again. I know you read it.

Hello!

I know how to break married segment

Care to share more information?

I can tell you that it's not so easy to crack married segments when all airlines run their own programming . I have managed to crack some of them, some of them I play with all their systems . It has cost me several hours of insomnia. I'm looking for a professional who knows his business in Amadeus . I would gladly trade some ideas . It may be many different ways how I manupulate the most airlines' systems . I'm still working on cracking their RTIM . Who is eager to share ?

Hello! I am really interested to know how to break the married segments, because the way I break still now, doesn't work more

urg
 

lo sabes romper los segmentos?

Please post in English. You can break up segments before ticket is issued, but fare is usually higher - either select the flights yourself (but there is no guarantee they are not married) or discuss with your travel agency.