Can't go back and forth between cities on .com?

Maybe I'm missing something obvious but I can't get a routing to work on Co.com:

I'm starting in Cleveland, going to NYC then to CHI then back to NYC and back to CHI and finally back home to CLE.

Trying to book:

CLE - LGA
EWR - ORD
ORD - EWR
EWR - ORD
ORD - CLE

and CO.com is telling me:

"! We could not process your request. Please see the message below and make revisions.

! You have entered an invalid routing. Please modify your city pairs and try again or use the Round Trip search option."

Well, thanks! But it is not a Round Trip, the city pairs are all fine and I think it is not an invalid routing.

Am I missing something? Am I just out of luck? Does Continental seriously not thinking that people might go back and forth between the same cities in the same week?

I would like to get the EQMs for this by booking on .com but can't figure this out.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

You can't use EWR as a connection between the ORD runs.

CLE-LGA/EWR-ORD-EWR/LGA-CLE should be valid, but the extra EWR-ORD-EWR in the middle kills it.

You might be able to use MDW to make it work, but I think the extra transit of EWR is going to mess you up.

Wow. I haven't tried that before and am dumbfounded that .com just can't build it.

I'm sure there is some sort of excellent reason it can't be done, but why wouldn't they allow me to build it and just price it accordingly? Why stop someone from building the itnerary?

Why not just book several tickets instead of the one? You should be able to get CLE-LGA as a one way, then book a roundtrip EWR-ORD, then a multi-city EWR-ORD and ORD-CLE. You'll actually get more miles splitting it out some (more 500 online purchase bonuses) and if you're a Travel Club member more of those $5.00 travel bank credits.

I thought of that, but am expensing this to one customer and don't want to mess with multiple receipts for the same trip. It's far easier just to have it all together (yes, I know that it might make no sense, but that's just easier for me).

Other airlines can handle this, so am not sure what the real issue is here with CO. Why can't they just price it out?

You're pricing several end-on-end itineraries and co.com is having trouble figuring out where to break them and price them. You can probably call it in, but they may even have trouble putting it all together.

Are the three email receipts really that big a deal to manage?

Hi sbm,

Sure. Because I am lazy.

Honestly, I'm just more confused about why CO.com can't handle it than anything else. Could I do it another way? Yeah, but why should I have to?

Let's put it this way, they are trying SO hard to drive traffic to CO.com yet something this simple can't be done. What about the traveler who has no knowledge of flyertalk.com and just wants to book the ticket?

There really is no reason why it shouldn't be possible. JMHO.

Phone res should be able to do it. Other third party sites, can do it too. I just built it fine at Expedia.

Yep, you are correct, but if I do it on the phone or Expedia, I don't get the 100% EQM (unless I am wrong).

Depends on what fare class it's pricing at. If it's at a U fare or higher, then you'll get at least 100% EQMs, regardless of where the ticket is purchased.

I'm not sure if this will work on your specific itinerary, but I have in the past been able to get convoluted itineraries to price and ticket if I manually look for and then chose specific times for flights, IE 8AM then a 2PM, then 5PM...seems to make it easier for the system to find flights.

Although, I suspect in this case, it is the "connection" in EWR

Thanks. Unfortunately, it is in W, X and I class and the 100% EQMs will matter.

Call the continental.com support line, explain what you are trying to do, they'll book it for you and you get 100% EQM.

Like the others have pointed out, the routing is invalid and can be fixed a few ways.

Thanks, greatly appreciated. I guess the bigger question is WHY it is invalid? Oh, well.

I suspect the routing is invalid no matter where you book it - CO, Expedia, etc. The only difference is that the CO website will only issue a single ticket per pax in an itinerary. I believe that if you booked this on Expedia you would find that it's issuing multiple tickets for each separate valid "block" of flights. You would be able to test this if you booked on Expedia, as it would show the ticket numbers that it has issued.

It raises the question of what would happen if there were any irregular ops. For example, if your ORD-EWR flight got delayed causing you to miss your EWR-ORD flight (assuming they were on separate tickets) I believe you would have no protection against this.

So overall the only benefit you would be getting here would be having a single receipt, and potentially there could be negatives to doing it. Personally I would just book multiple tickets and be done with it!