cctible

Hi, I was wondering if any Emirates experts might be able to help me out. I am trying to book a business class ticket from Dubai to St. Louis (in Dec, but no dates are working). The website and app won't offer any itineraries. Every time I looked in the past, it offered a connection through SEA, then on Alaska to STL. It's backtracking a bit, but I guess it's the best direct connection to STL through an Emirates gateway with a partner airline. (I did chat online with an agent about 6 months ago who looked up Chicago and said he/she could also piece that one together somehow.) Now I can't seem to find ANY way to fly Emirates and get me to STL on one ticket. So sad. I talked to an agent for an hour today and he couldn't figure it out either. He even got help but they couldn't figure out why "the system" won't price out a ticket when you add the STL leg. The website lets me do a same day multi-city ticket, but of course then I'm not protected in the event of winter weather delays, etc.

Any suggestions or tricks of the trade? Could a travel agent maybe work around this problem?

Thanks!

skywardhunter

You're 100% protected if you use the multi city option, it's still a single ticket

cctible

Really? That's good to know. I did a bunch of Googling/research online and different sites I found seemed to say that each ticket within the multi-city ticket is considered a separate & independent flight, as if you had purchased two separate tickets. (I can't find it on the Emirates website itself, and the terms & conditions are too technical to understand!) I'd have only 4-5 hours in between arriving in SEA and picking up the next leg/ticket to STL, which is below my personal comfort threshold for separate tickets when arriving on an international flight. But you're saying if the DBX to SEA flight was delayed, I'd be protected on the SEA to STL flight even though it's a multi city ticket instead of a normal DBX to STL booking?

Thanks!

thijsseh

skywardhunter

There is no such thing as a multi city ticket. The Emirates website (and many OTAs) have a multi city search option which is useful when your return departs or arrives at a different airport than your outbound, you have more than 2 segments on your itinerary, want to add a stopover or force a specific connection. The resulting ticket is still a regular ticket. It just give you a hit more control over the flight combinations and sometimes fares. Because the STL flight is operated by AS (and btw I'd also look for B6 connections) there might not be a fare available from DXB-STL so the website just says "sorry, nada" but if you feed it each leg separately it can find the EK fare DXB-SEA and price the separate AS fare to STL.

The above is mostly my conjecture on how pricing works. But to answer your question, yes you'd be protected. Virtually every flight I book is a "multi-city" flight. Also EK isn't AA, it's rare to be more than 30 mins late, let alone an hour or two.

cctible

Thanks for the explanation! That helps a lot. Kind of funny that the multiple Emirates reps couldn't come up with that solution (he just said he'd send a report of the problem booking to the support team), but I'm glad to have at least one option now!

skywardhunter

Not entirely accurate. As long as the entire trip is one ticket. With multiple airlines there are often multiple PNRs involved. Protection ultimately depends on the ticket, not the PNR.

thijsseh

skywardhunter

Yes. And note that in some cases one can have multiple ticket numbers on itineraries with many legs as a single ticket can only hold a certain number (8?) Of coupons (legs).

But essentially if everything is on a single ticket (number) it's protected.