drvannostren

I don't see a lot of talk about Connectmiles awards here and previously I didn't really care, program was in it's infancy, I didn't have any miles, whatever.

Recently though after accruing some miles I started looking into awards. I've noticed some things and I'm wondering if any of you are experiencing the same things, or if there's been any workarounds yet, like simply calling the call center?

1) I've seen CM awards when they didn't show up on Aeroplan. Of course that's a good thing, it's kinda to be expected too, only these were at like saver rates too. I was looking for a very last minute CUZ-MDE one way and found nothing on Aeroplan. Then found J class on Aeroplan for 35,000. Found a better routing on CM for 20,000.

2) I've probably searched...10 random things via the Copa search engine. Using the "All airlines" option and I swear, I've NEVER come up with anything. Other times I've searched knowing there's space via Expertflyer and/or Aeroplan and I've come up with a hit here or there on like 1-2 individual segments I've searched. It seems like either the actual award space available to CM is garbage, or their search engine is.

3) Anyone had any success booking awards that aren't on CM metal? Did you search space on Expertflyer or something and call in the flights? Success rate?

I don't mind the programs being a bit limited, but star alliance has fairly good award space availability but what good is it if you can't access any of it?

pmarrsouth

I was going to create a thread about 2 recent (and my only) redemptions for my CM miles, which were in the last couple of weeks. Here is a summary of the most recent call (7th Nov), which was fairly similar to my first reward booking experience (and yes, the site is useless, I check on UA & EF for space):

I can see availability in O (Saver First) from TYO(HND/NRT)-PTY, thru LAX/ORD/IAH on the 2nd Oct 2020. This is the maximum (furthest) date that is available currently for NH O. There is availability for many days before this, also in NH O, including through LAX/SFO/IAD/IAH/ORD with 1-2 seats depending on the date/route. I can see the availability on both United's site/app and also Expertflyer.com. It is highly unlikely to be phantom. The below took over 4 hours.

Agent1 - Could find no availability for any date from HND/NRT(TYO)-LAX, could not find HND/NRT-PTY - I asked for 2nd Oct, was told non for 30th Sept - 5th Oct, asked for 8th Sept and for 10th Nov 2019. Told that there is no availability at all. I commented that some options are available on copaair.com and if she looks now she can see that. Had no faith that she could find no availability at all for any flight from HND/NRT-PTY (I do understand that the copaair.com site is pretty lacking for award bookings and it might not be exactly up to date with actual space, however to be blanketly told that no space exists at all from HND/NRT-PTY is not really acceptable) - 1 hr 46 mins long call and then HUCA

Agent2 - Found 1 flight on Oct 2nd "UA38 leaves 6:20pm on the 2nd Oct from HND and arrives on 12:25pm on the 3rd Oct to LAX and the flight is 18 hours long" - but could only see X availability, nothing else existed. She could also not find any flight from LAX-PTY that would work with the UA flight. I asked her to confirm that according to her system it tells her that the flight leaves at 6:20pm on the 2nd Oct and arrives at 12:25pm on the 3rd October, she said “yes” multiple times. I stressed, several times, that this was impossible as this would be an over 30 hour flight and they don't really exist commercially. I explained that if you leave Tokyo on X date, that you will arrive into LAX/SFO etc on the same date, as Tokyo is 17/18 hours ahead of LAX/SFO and it’s a ~10 hour flight. Again this didn't move her and she "confirmed" that the flight departed Tokyo on the 2nd and arrived on the 3rd. Again no faith can be had in either the agent or possibly in the system, if it is actually telling agents such incorrect information - 33mins long call and then HUCA

Agent3 - Finds HND-EWR-PTY in Economy (X) on 2nd Oct. Told me many times that ANA (NH) has not released any inventory for October. Could find no I or O at all. Found some other X on 1st/2nd/3rd Oct through FRA etc, which included NH from HND (I believe) in X, so NH does have some availability. Nothing higher than X. Asked him to do a global search. Found Business Standard on some date in Sept (cannot remember exact date) through some city. After a lot of back and forth about what was happening, he found NRT-IAD-PTY in O/I on NH/CM on the 8th Sept for 1 person - so availability for NH in First (O) does exist! I then had him use the exact same method to try to find the 2 spaces that I could see from HND-LAX-PTY with HND-LAX in O on NH106 2nd Oct. He was then able to find it after previously stating nothing in O available at all. It then took probably 20 minutes for him to work out the cost in miles / taxes and to submit a request to NH to confirm the space (I have no problem with this wait, however agents should not manually have to do this imo, it can lead to mistakes and is highly time consuming) - 1 hour 28 mins long call

I had to go through a very similar process several weeks ago when booking PTY-LAX-YVR. Many phone calls required until one agent could finally find flights in I (Saver Business), which were the ones I was stating all along that existed. Again being told multiple times that there is no availability by several agents.

This is not a good system. It will annoy most passengers into quitting the process. It will also stop people who are not 100% sure that availability exists from getting the tickets they want. And it must annoy the agents to be on the phone for 90+ minutes trying to sort this out, looking up a ton of options, see no available space (or looking it up incorrectly?), and after persistently being told by the customer on the phone that there is space, finally finding it. It also uses up their resources, which will delay others from being able to connect to an agent for other queries. Spending 10 hour on the phone to book 2 pairs of reward tickets is insane.

They use SHARES. I am still unsure on what they are doing on their end, I obv cannot see their screen. I give exact flight details (date, airline, flight number, cities, times, fare class) and they can not find what I can see. I have them do global searches and they can not see what I can see. Agents will continually say to please call back in a few days/weeks and see if there is availability then, as there is none now. Trying to stress the point that any good O space gets eaten up quickly and so it needs to be found & booked now doesn't seem to help much.

Once any flight is booked (or actually held)) that involves non-CM metal, they have to contact the operating airline to make sure that the space is available. They will asked you to call back in 5-6 hours to pay for it. To actually pay for PTY-LAX-YVR booking took about 13 more minutes and was fine. However it took far too long, with over 90 minutes being consumed to pay for the HND-LAX-PTY reward.

TL;DR - Check UA/EF for space
Call them, CopaAir.com does not have good availability
Have some time set aside to book your tickets
Have patience & do not give up
HUCA if its going nowhere

drvannostren

Very good and detailed response. It's good to know the space searching actually works. The only thing more frustrating that this is the same thing AND not actually having it work out. Singapore Airlines is incredibly frustrating. Their site sucks, AND they don't have the same availability as anyone else. So it's impossible to kinda throw it back at them and say "actually I'm sure there's space, please try this".

Can I ask...were these calls all in English? I speak pretty good spanish and I know sometimes that helps when I'm trying to call either AV or CM. I can't really fault them for that part, but it makes me wonder sometimes. Like, when an agent tells you so quickly "no availability, nope, not that one either, nope, no, nope, sorry nothing". Like...they WORK for the program, they have to know how some things work. It's one thing to say "sir F space dries up really quickly". It's another thing to say, no it exists on no routes, on no days, regardless of how far out you look. It's as if the only training they get is their own metal and it's like "here's how you book a PTY-MDE award". Like the absolute easiest of awards.

I think we need to develop a quiz to arm ourselves with when calling these places. Like 3 "skill testing questions" to test the agent before we waste 50-60 minutes and just end up HUACA.

It's good to know though that in the end you got what you were looking for, and like you said some things I don't mind waiting for, like the payment or what have you.

pmarrsouth

Unsure what exactly you mean by your SQ comment, and by "them" if you mean SQ staff or other. SQ does not release that much I/O inventory to the rest of *A either way. Its possible to find it, but definitely not as generous as others. They do have a lot of space for their own Krisflyer members, I believe

All calls were in English. For the most part, the agents English is good enough to do the job. Its their training or knowledge of the tools that are lacking. A couple of things might have gotten lost in translation, so I just worded it differently. There was NO confusion/language barrier when they were saying "no O availability" imo. It was said by all 3 agents, they were all incorrect, and not a language issue. Spanish may indeed help for a few keywords

I would hope that the CopaAir site shows all correct CM inventory (when logged in). Since EF/UA etc will only show what CM release to *A, it obv won't show the additional awards/options that are bookable by prefer members. There is no way to waitlist on CM (at least not as of last year), so it would be redic if one has to phone up everyday to make sure that PTY-XYZ still has no I inventory, as is displayed on the site

One thing that bugs me, and I am unsure if its a language thing or not, but when I was booking the PTY-YVR trip, 2 agents kept on saying something along the lines of "no I don't see that on the site". I pulled them up on that each time, saying that please do not check the copaair website, I can do that myself and to please use your own tools. They both continually referred to whatever they were looking at (SHARES presumably) as "the site"

I also had an agent on that PTY-YVR call, again in the redemption department, state that if I wanted to book on UA or AC metal, I would have to call those airlines to book. I was thinking ... is this and just HUCA. That was one of the "skill testing" comments right there. How she thought I would be able to fly to YVR without non CM metal was beyond me

These agents, afaik, are actually trained on the redemption tools and are part of a special team to deal with award bookings. They are not just run of the mill phone staff trying to look routes up. There was one very good guy that I talked to a few months back, who was able to quickly look up whatever I wanted and he explained some info about what they can see (if they are not great at using their tools) as well as why the website is so bad, and that everything they have to do is manual. He was the one who processed the payment for my PTY-LAX-YVR booking. I specifically asked for him when trying to book from TYO, and was told by 1 agent that he was not in, and when I asked another agent it sounded like he no longer works there - that part might have been a language issue/misunderstanding. Shame

One thing on HUCA. On the TYO attempts, I actually had 8-10 calls in total. I got through to Agent 1 multiple times, before another person picked up on the next call. The department is not that big, especially if you are narrowing it to English specific agents

drvannostren

Searched YVR-PEK all airlines for like 10 months out last night, INSTANT "no award seats" reply over and over regardless of date. I wonder if their search engine is just complete trash.

Their own flights are just fine, so maybe I'll just accumulate enough miles to book a decent CM award, I like flying CM and they fly to places I wanna go, only problem is they don't fly to my home airport YVR.

pmarrsouth

This hasn’t changed

drvannostren

But it makes me wonder, why have a search engine that clearly doesn't work then? Singapore's website is arguably worse, at least the CM one is fast to tell you there's nothing. I'd be fine if they just disabled the other airlines feature and left the online as CM only and just said "call for all other partners". While MOST airlines are getting away from this archaic practice, FFs have kinda been trained that sometimes u just gotta call in.