duxfan::
if nwa shows reward availability, can you always use your co miles??

I've redeemed over 200,000mi in the last year and have only once had an availability problem. I think I redeemed 35,000mi instead of 25,000 for a domestic reward ticket (half easypass) to remedy the problem.

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daniel baker -- [email protected]
Reliable, fast, and unmoderated forums at ITYT.

Sometimes I think you live in a parallel universe. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

luv2go:

yes, unless there's a scenario that I haven't encountered yet. you call OnePass and tell them that you wish to make an award reservation on NW. Then tell them that you've looked up the flights on NW's website that you know are available. it speeds the process up quite a bit.

NW does seem easier using CO miles. Last year we tried to get 3 FC seats SAT-HNL. 5 months out CO told me there was no availability during the entire month of June.

Called NW and got the 3 seats on exactly the dates and flights we wanted. Took no more than ~20 min. including the time it took them to call CO.

I guess I have had good luck landing what I wanted in terms of free travel and upgrades.

However, I can be usually flexible a few days around my desired dates. For example, just today, I booked two K-class tickets with BF upgrades BOS-NRT-BOS. I paid $990+taxes for each. My first choice of dates was not available, but I gave the agent discretion on a 4 day window around my first choice, and he was able to land me what I wanted.

Now, this might not be a big deal in low or shoulder season, but these are for early-mid June in the middle of the World Cup (which I'm going to see http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif). To be fair, I was dreading the phone call to the elite desk: I was expecting the usual teeth-pulling experience of finding routings and rates that at least weren't painful to think about. I was quite surprised at the ease of the transaction....

So you're the one who flies to Rochester. Hey Shillboy, try getting a REAL reward and see how lucky you are.

I tried just this a few months ago for J class reward tickets. The agent replied, "What NW makes available to their members is not always what they make available to OP members." Go figure.

Who told you this? A CO agent? You don't think that maybe the CO agent had an interest in getting you to use the miles on CO, do you? I haven never encountered a NW award that I couldn't have because the miles were coming from a OnePass account.

The ticket was for a route not served by CO, only NW, so the issue of using CO metal becomes irrelevant. At the time, I had no reason to doubt the agent, since she seemed otherwise competent. But your post certainly does arouse my suspicions.



[This message has been edited by Babu (edited 04-23-2002).]

If ResAgent86 is around perhaps the question can be answered:

Does CO management "encourage" Res agents to sell CO awards over NW?

babu, don't forget the first rule of dealing with an airline. If you don't like the answer you get, simply hang up and call back....

CO does not encourage us to sell reward seats on CO over NW. However, it is much easier to look for CO buckets because our reservations system has a search feature which is unreliable on other airlines (not by purposeful design). So most agents concentrate on looking for CO, since it is much easier to search.

If an agent doesn't volunteer to look for space on NW, KL or AS (or HP and F9 until the agreement ends), ask them to do so. I will miss HP especially, since they tend to have a couple of standard reward seats on many of their flights.

I have no idea whether NW makes more seats available for WorldPerks vs. Onepass. I suspect the other agent doesn't really know this either. I have noticed some people like to voice opinions of things they are not informed about.

One tip though: If looking for buckets from NRT into Asia, if no availablity, have the agent check the same flight on NW starting in SEA, LAX, JFK or DTW, using the trans-Pacific NW connection. Often, for some reason, our system will show zero seats available out of NRT, but the same flight will have standard reward seats starting from the US gateway. I sell the whole package, and if I don't need it, I knockoff connecting flight from the US gateway. Voila, I have a bucket to Bangkok (BKK is probably the city you need to do this for most often).

By the way, if I had my druthers, I would take reward calls all day, with no paid tickets. People tend to buy the reward reservation, and making them is more challenging and interesting.

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I am not a sanctioned representative of Continental on these boards, just an interested participant.

[This message has been edited by ResAgent86 (edited 04-23-2002).]

You are MY kind of agent RA86.. Again, thank you soo much for all your clarifications; as you can see, we are a confused bunch!!

Robin