Please help with US-Asia award with stopover in Europe
 

I am trying to see if it is possible and allowable to book an US-Asia award with a stopover in Europe for 120,000 miles in Business. On the return leg, it looks like co.com insists to route via Europe again and not via Pacific. Furthermore, also on co.com, when I try to piece this as multiple destinations: SLC-OTP(stop), OTP-SIN, SIN-SLC, I get much less options on each leg than I get when searching for that leg as a one-way.

Can phone agents do more than what the website can?

I don't have the miles yet, but would like to know if this is possible before I start building them.

Thanks everyone!

CO's award routing rules are pretty liberal, so you won't have a problem flying one way over the Atlantic and the other over the Pacific. The multi-city booking tool is awful, so the best plan is to find flights that have availability using one-way searches on the web, then to call Continental and feed them each segment. They should be able to price the award you're asking for at the 120k level.

Not exactly. From what I have read here, one of the consistently applied rules is no circle trips. That being said, they can be booked via co.com

To OP: I had more success getting circle trips to work using multi-city if there was an open jaw at your destination. Also, try using multi-city to force a city that you know availability exists for. Like SIN-NRT-SLC on the return with a less than 24 hour stop in NRT.

Going via the Atlantic one way and via the Pacific the other is perfectly acceptable assuming the actual award routing rules are met.

To the OP: If you want to do a stopover, you will almost certainly have to call CO to book the award, especially if you have nontrivial routings in order to find desirable award space.

This is my experience: booked the following ticket for 120K miles from CO site:

BOS-EWR-NRT-SIN-PVG-FRA-BOS

I've booked multiple award trips to SE Asia over both oceans (never online, always over the phone due to the complexity of my trips) so it's very much allowed as long as each direction meets the standard routing rules.

Splitting the return leg into SIN-NRT and NRT-SLC did not work. I also tried others such as SIN-ICN and ICN-SLC, SIN-HND and HND-SLC without success.

The open jaw at destination suggestion did work for me. Thank you wcalvert!

Any suggestions as where to go and what to visit with an open jaw in Asia? I have never been there so I am open to any and all suggestions. I won't have too much time for this trip though.

What do you mean by standard routing rules? Number of segments? The standard routing rules are clear that circle trips are not allowed.

Very nice! One easy place would be BKK. Lots of airlines flying between the two and it's reasonably close to SIN. Also, lots of business availability on Thai Airways.

Number of segments may be limited somewhere around 11 or 12 from my experience, but mostly it's a Maximum Permitted Mileage issue. A trip that goes over the Atlantic in one direction and the Pacific in the other must not be considered a circle trip by CO (I'm not sure what the real definition of that is.) Search the forum for Asia award ticket success, though, there are lots of people who have booked pseudo-RTW itineraries. My last was ATL-FRA-NRT-BKK-HKT, HKT-BKK-SIN, SIN-(NRT)-LAX-CLT-ATL.