Award availability - book together vs individually
 

By some sort of a holy grail quest, I managed to find 2 award tickets available for 2 passengers who wish to travel together.

Ideally I'd like to book them separately, where miles and taxes for passenger A would be charged to passenger A's AM account and credit card. And likewise separately for passenger B.

Would it be the case that, after passenger A books, the other ticket will still remain available for passenger B to make a separate booking (assuming noone else snags it in the meantime)? Or will the second availability be zerorised as soon as the first ticket has been booked?

It is impossible to second guess the yield management system.

If you call for the booking you can deduct two accounts. Me and missus frequently do that. We don’t try to separate payment of taxes tho (in fact it has to go into my card for included travel cover)

Agree with brunos that GDS today is so complex that anything can happen, although I do not see why taking 1 seat would result in the other seat in the same booking class disappearing. percysmith's trick works to deduct miles from different account but not pay separately. In the past when you paid via phone, this was doable, but not now that all payments are processed online. If you want extra assurance, what you can do is to create this booking (probably better over the phone) with 2 pax in the same PNR, then ask the agent to split the PNR after all segments are booked, before getting separate payment links for individual PNRs.

Thanks for all the inputs. I decided not to chance it, hence booked everything (online) under passenger A’s AM account. This is one of the rare Europe - HKG - SIN routes at only 65K AM each before the 1 Oct devaluation (soon to be 84K!) so we’re pretty chuffed about it!

Reasons for this slightly odd request are:
- Passenger B has some orphaned AM in the account, which happens to be just sufficient for one redemption.
- I thought passenger B’s travel insurance kicks in only when the taxes are charged to their card. But in checking the fine print, it covers also when charged to Passenger A’s card if Passenger B is “travelling together”.

I have experienced the exact same case you have mentioned. Since I found 2 award seats available, I wanted to reissued a ticket for myself and was planning to book the same flight for my mum. I asked the agent on phone and he reassured me that there were enough seat for 2 when I was in the process of reissuing the ticket. But the availablitliy was instantly gone right after my ticket was suscessfully reissued.
I should have asked the agent to do the reissue and make a new booking for my mum simutaneously.

Wow… sorry to hear it happened to you. It reinforces what brunos said earlier about how no one (including booking agents) knows how the system works!