Usually you can just go back in to the reservation and upgrade it. I've done that before, after I had a receipt showing coach. ^

The box is always a legit place to post CO questions, unless you're posting about food. Food questions always get their own thread.

I have occasionally gone through the purchase process of a Y seat and just skipped the "upgrade me" part of the booking. Once I get the email with the receipt I go back in to the reservation online and I'm able to upgrade it there - no interaction with a CO agent required. I've also booked a non-Y fare, printed the confirmation email and then gone back and canceled it and purchased the Y-up myself, eating the cost of the difference. Both worked just fine for getting my expenses paid without having to explain anything to anyone.

belynch, August sounds like an ideal time to visit Madeira. You can use TP to get there from LIS, and landing on the carrier-deck at FNC is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I've heard.

Thanks MilesDavis and sbm12! ^

I could purchase a $900 non-refundable fare but I have a sneaky suspicion the travel plans are going to change midway through the trip, so I sprung for the $200 more expensive ticket.

I looked at getting to/from LIS and the routings were all wiggidy-whack. I think I might need to make that its own vacation at some point.

Right now I'm relatively happy with our BCN - FUE excursion. It's a total of 12 days and I think that will give me enough time to explore BCN, the wine country of Spain, and maybe even peak into Southern France* before heading over to FUE (best said as my significantly blonder-half does, "we're going to fooiee? :confused:").

rolov, thanks for the offer of assistance. I might take you up on that.

Next trick is getting the US agents at LGA to redeposit my MLE paper :rolleyes: tickets, refund the taxes, and then complete the FUE booking. I'm allowing myself an hour for this nonsense before I have to head over to the main terminal at LGA to catch my CO flights. I checked and the ticket counter at ABQ** closes 20 min. after I land this evening. So, I'm SOL if I don't get it done today. And, knowing the caliber of the US agents at LGA I'm saying my chances are about 1:10. :rolleyes:

In good news, I got the upgrade for my LGA-IAH flight. I'm batting a pretty high percentage on CO for EUA's. I'd say around 85% on upgrade-able flights (non RJ's).





*Cap d'agde? :eek::o:eek:
**Not that an HP station would have any idea of what to do with something like this.

Madeira is on my short list of "places I must visit, and soon." It's in the top 5, along with another obscure (to most Americans, at least) batch of Portuguese islands: The Azores.

I'm well versed in the Canary Islands, Azores, and other Southern European regions thanks to my coworkers.

Have I mentioned I work for a Germany company? :p

(Mallorca has unofficially been annexed by Germany I think)

The City of Manchester begs to differ. :D

Or not, perhaps they're all busy invading Tenerife this month...

Ha. Fair enough.

I was at a German economic forum a few weeks ago and was surprised to see that Germany's number one export is Germans. ;)*

Re: the British. Although I certainly understand the stereotype of the "ugly American" abroad, I tend to find British folks (stereotypically speaking of course) are more brash than Americans. That could also be because of the regions I travel to though.

Why can't we all be more like the Canucks. Make like a goose and fly under the radar.





*recycled Cuba joke

I just calculated that between 6/14 and 6/27 I will have earned over 30k EQM's on CO.

I feel like I just ate my weight in cake. :o

I'll take that action. ;)

If everything is loaded correctly in the system AND you have an agent who knows how to process partner bookings it should take ~10-15 minutes to complete both transactions. If not an hour is not enough time. I had a similar issue with CO and my RTW paper tickets in August '06. I had to use paper tickets because of segments in Vietnam and no one wanted to issue them. I spent 1+ hour at EWR on 3 different occasions, each time having to leave and actually go catch my flight and still not have my tickets in hand. One of those trips was actually to FLL and on my return I casually mentioned the issue to the counter agent at FLL. Within 10 minutes I had both paper tickets issued and in hand, as well as my FLL-EWR flight moved up to the earlier flight that I was trying to catch without paying the $25 SDC fee and also with the EUA issued. She was VERY good. I swore that if I needed to reissue the tickets again I was going to fly down to FLL on a MR to handle it since that was easier and faster than dealing with the folks at EWR.

On a similarly related note, I used some of my US miles to book IST-NAV/ASR-IST for my vacation in September. Besides the difficulty the agents had figuring out what region Turkey is in, whether they could book onto TK and what the redemption rate was, apparently the US systems also do not really have those cities loaded into them. So they were able to find the seats and reserve them for me but they cannot issue the ticket because the system doesn't understand what my destinations are. Apparently someone in the rates desk group there has to actually add the destinations into a database somewhere so the ticket can be issued. I'm on day 4 of that wait now.

They tend not to wear clothes on the beech as well.:eek:

British tourists are terrible. Greece is overrun with them. They're like pasty (or lobster-hued) locusts.

Any suggestions on a Vegas hotel for a first time visitor mostly interested in just checking out the more extravagant places the strip has to offer?

I'm leaning towards the Venetian right now but am also considering the Bellagio, Wynn or the new Palazzo (although, I hear parts of it are still under construction). Does anyone know much about the new Trump International? I can't stomach the thought of supporting that man's business ventures but I might consider it if the hotel comes highly recommended.