Inefficient Award Request procedure
 

For non-KL\NW awards, you have to fill out a form and wait 5 business days to hear from FD.

In this era of electronics, computers and telecommunications, why is such a cumbersome system still place?

BTW, after waiting the 5 days, the answer to al my CO requests were a resounding NO.

And I thought this was only a LatinPass problem in the past.

Exactly my experience.I was really happy when they announced that CO joins the party.After two CO flights ( one in a middle seat )and constant NO`s early this year for CO awards I don`t care anymore about CO.Since Gordo is the Messias of the airline industry I guess he needs the seats, especially on the daily 777 from AMS to IAH.I monitor this flight since some months ( cause I assumed that one should get one BF seat out of 48 )and the flight leaves with open seats in C regularly.Have requested it some times, but nada !!

Not to mention the ridiculous time they need to process your request....

If awards are available using the feature on CO's web-site, can it be assumed that they will be through KLM? IE Do they use the same inventory?

Thanks.

Award tickets are allocated in 'buckets' so a klm flight from DTW to AMS will have a KLM award ticket bucket, a separate Northwest award ticket bucket, and a third Continental one pass award ticket bucket.

If you have 2 passengers traveling the same itinerary you may have to pull flight segments from different buckets because the allocation on say KL is gone but NW or CO still has award space in their "award ticket buckets"

Sometimes when traveling from CMH to WAW I have an award ticket with some NW flights on KL Metal and some KL codeshare flights on Northwest metal because the award ticket had to be spread out on more than one airline's award ticket bucket(s).

Does this make any sense?

[This message has been edited by Radiocycle (edited 12-21-2002).]

Thanks, Radiocycle. Your post does make sense and also points to some of the complexities of the airline industry (especially to an outsider) with multiple frequent flyer program alliance partners and multiple airlines code-sharing on the same flight. Gosh, now I'm not sure if my post makes any sense!!