Irregular Ops exception to award routing rules?
 

According to the award rules, the main limitations on the routing is:

1. 16 segments maximum
2. no more than 1 stopover and 2 connections through the same airport
3. once ticketed, no change allowed in location of any connections nor stopovers.

I am about to ticket (waiting for 330 limit to arrive) some oneworld awards, and if everything comes off as I plan (before seeing what will be available) it will be 14 segments, with one airport at the "use limit" (Sydney), and some destinations with very limited service (like Queenstown, New Zealand).

If there is a mechanical or other delay, missing the rare (often once a week) direct flight, would the airline for the segment with the delay (or the segment missed) have to get me to the destination in a reasonably timely manner even if it would result in violating the limitations due to the irregular ops?

Thanks very much,

Steve

While not a direct answer to your question, see http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...&postcount=169.

In my case the delay was not due to BA / ComAir and they did nothing at all to help. I dont know what they would have done / not done had the delay been theirs.

The only exception that was allowed was changing a connection to a stopover. FWIW, there was no AA involvement in any of these changes. It was all handled by BA / ComAir in JNB.

For a normal mis-connect (flight arrives late), the same irregular ops rerouting applies as for revenue tickets. The OW award rules are completely irrelevant, so you don't have to worry about segment, transit or stopover limits. Whether the airline will allow reroute onto other metal varies by airline and condition, but QF has ample service on your routes for the most part and would probably limit you to taking the next available QF metal flight.

My experiences -- not quite irregular ops however
 

I was on a very complex OW trip through Europe. At the point where I experienced my difficulties, I was due to move from Helsinki to St Petersburg for a few days, then on to Edinburgh. With a 14 city tour like this, the logistics were equally complex involving many hotel award stays. Effectively, it locked me into specific days for each city.

Somehow in arranging for the very expensive visas for my family to enter Russia, something went awry. Given that much of the visa was in Cyrillic, I didn't look to closely, but it turns out my dates of entry and exit were off by two days. Of course, in very bureaucratic countries, this is a complete show stopper. FinnAir rightly refused to board us, as we would not have been granted entry into Russia.

Once I cancelled my arrangements in Russia, we turned to the question of what to do next. Having already spent time in Helsinki I preferred to go elsewhere, and the family was leaning towards accelerating our entry into Scotland.

However, FinnAir were totally unwilling to change anything. No change in date, no rerouting, no cancel of the segment from Russia. It would have resulted in the cancellation of the remainder of my trip once I failed to take the segments to and from St Petersburg. Very very unhelpful even with the supervisor involved.

Fortunately, there is always the home airline FF department to fall back upon. I called the EXP desk of AA and they were much more helpful. They rebooked my flight Helsinki to Edinburgh and removed the segments that were now infeasible.

Incredibly, the FinnAir staff were unwilling to check us in. They didn't care that AA had changed the reservations. In their mind, the OW trip was cast in stone and therefore voided itself with any change.

I ended up on the phone a few more times and the impasse was fixed only when AA faxed some specific authorizations to Finnair. I don't know if they tried to go back and collect cash from AA for the flight out of Helsinki or whether they are so rifdly bureacratic that nobody will move without a pile of CYA paper. Fortunately, I didn't need to care as we flew out of there a few hours later.

Our additional time in Scotland was a real highlight of the trip, worth the anxiety with the unhelpful OW partner.

This isn't a direct match to irregular ops, but I would imagine that the behavior will depend as much on the partner's attitude as on the general rules. I have asked to switch to earlier IB flights with great smiling results. BA were a delight to deal with. The inflight service and friendly FAs on Finnair were superb, so this isn't a general Finnair problem.

Aren't you able to change xONEx dates after departure? as long as their is no change of route?

The flight had a range of flights that included:

. . . HEL - LED - HEL . . .

Once I found out our visas were invalid, we could not fly to LED. This is not just a change of date, it is a change of route technically as we dropped the flights to and from LED. If you are are very strict with the rules, this is not allowed, even for extraordinary conditions. Thus, we were given no help when it would seem to anyone who switched on their brain for a minute that it actually would cost AY less -- and they already got the credit for the award miles whether we flew it or not -- to send us on the following segment a couple of days early, but a narrow construction was what I got.

Oneworld awards cannot change routing under any circumstances -- this is one of the costs of using this type of award. AA did you a tremendous favour and broke many rules for you, hope you were suitably thankful. It won't happen again (in alll probability). Unlike most other awards, you cannot even change the airline between city pairs, the no-rerouting rule is that strict. Oneworld awards on AA do allow free change of dates, though (some other OW airlines allow no date changes on these awards, either!).

I am always thankful for the great treatment AA gives me.

On the other hand, do you think that a policy that just revokes the rest of the ticket and leaves someone stranded 10,000 miles from home is reasonable? This was a special case not a desire on my part to reschedule or visit different countries.

The airline would not fly me on the segments in the reservation. Russia would not accept me had I flown. The originating airline (AA) checked our passports and theoretically validates that all appropriate visas and rights are in place before transporting anyone, because they are responsible for transporting someone back if the paperwork is not in order when a visitor attempts immigration. This was not a cavilier change nor an obvious error -- missed by everyone until boarding the flight in question.

Do you really truly think any sane airline would just leave someone and delete a dozen subsequent flights because of a visa problem?

What exactly was so "special" about this case? You made a mistake, and were solely responsible for it.

Why on earth would AA even check for a Russian visa, since you were flying to a totally different country? AY (and not AA) would have been responsible for transporting you back to HEL, since they were the ones, who brought you to LED.

Nope, not resaonable, and IMO AA did the right thing by you, if they had done less I would have been extremely upset, rules or not rules. But they (AA) were the only ones in a position to go the extra mile for you, I don't see how Finnair is at fault; they -had- to go by the book here, I can't see what else they could/should have done.

Getting a new valid visa from the Russian Consulate in Helsinki visa should have been a matter of max. 24 hours (on working days), though the embassies usually charge a rip-off express fee (up to 300 $), but that's still better than voiding a valuable ticket.
For example, the Russian Embassy in London takes a GBP 90 surcharge for processing within 1 hour: http://www.rusemblon.org/visa/consular_fee_main.htm

About the Russian visas, the usual technique is to get them issued for dates that bracket your actual travel dates (to allow for travel delays). Any competent TA will automatically do this, and the Russians play along for up to a week before/after. Too bad you didn't have good advice on getting the visas. You'll know for next time.

About the OW awards, AA does offer other award types which do allow rerouting (while OW awards do not); however it would have cost quite a bit more Aadvantage miles to redeem those awards instead. So you traded off a cheap award cost with lack of flexibility -- then complain about the lack of flexibility (or expect AA to provide flexibility for "unusual circumstances"). Now every reroute has some sort of "unusual circumstance". I've had revenue tickets which became invalid due to visa problems, and it cost me thousands of dollars to fix it. I wish the OW rules allowed for more flexibility, but they don't and most of us live with it (or don't use those awards).

Well, it was a saturday and by the time I would have had the three replacement visas, it would be the time for the flights to the next destination.

Certainly a good option in general.

Hey, ease up. I don't need to be lectured to like a child, a cheat or a freeloader.

I wasn't posting a complaint about flexibility of the awards. the OP asked about what would happen if the airline cancelled a flight. I don't know directly but had a situation near to it that I shared.

I have used OW awards and paid tickets many times, am fully aware of the restrictions, and have had nary a problem except for the one caused by the bad visa. In my view, having the ticket voided wasn't reasonable at that point; neither was it to AA. On the other hand, both you and AY think it was warranted. Obviously people can differ on this.

Thanks for the examples.

I'm sure it helped smooth things along being an AA ExPlat/OW Emerald. I'm just a Plat-lite/Sapphire now, and then will likely be a Gold/Ruby (unless a really good MR opportunity opens up before then--which I check for each day)

What I was thinking might happen is, for example, missing the once a week flight from Sydney to Queenstown after a delay flying Melbourne to Sydney early in the morning to catch that. Then the likely alternatives would be a re-route through either Aukland or Christchurch to Queenstown.

Thanks again,

Steve

don't know but here is how I analyze this
 

Let me start this by saying I don't know either from experience or from hard rules. Here is the way I think about the situation you posited -- due to operational issue of carrier and no fault of your own, you miss the flight.

I think of an analogy to help me. Imagine you booked a very desireable reward flight and the connection is missed because your first segment is late late late.

If there is no award inventory for the next month on your next leg, would it be reasonable for the airline to make you sit in that city for 30 days until the next exact fare bucket opens up? On the other hand, would they look for a reasonable routing, perhaps looking for a differnt bucket like Y or F and get you onward?

Based on all the experiences I have had with airlines, the second case is much more likely. Remember, I am not talking about customer requested changes or customer no-shows, but that operational issues cause you to miss the booked segment.

Going with the logic of the analogy, I would suspect that the airline would look for a reasonable way to get you to your next destination and not insist that you conform exactly to the flight, date and routing of the ticket -- this is not a voluntary change on your part. They might have to use some irregular operations ticketing magic, including the code for disrupted flights, if the systems won't allow the extra segments to be directly entered with your eticket, but they will find a way to get you moving forward as soon as a seat is found. Might be a case of downgrade versus longer wait, but in that case they would likely discuss it with you first.

...............

That does sound like a very reasonable way for someone to approach looking at this.

But I also realize that sometimes "reasonable" doesn't always apply. For example, when my current boss added my section to her control, she complained to me about the number of days off I had switched in the previous year. I explained to her that all of those changes had been accomodations I made for the convenience of the agency, not my own. She said it didn't matter, that I was not to do that anymore; so I confirmed with her that I would inform the other department that from now on they would have to alter their scheduling to conform to my schedule if they really wanted me to be available for those events. (She also had refused to authorize my getting a pager, cell phone nor blackberry--which actually suits me fine [which is why I don't push it]as I don't need the headache of the three other departments who would really like me to have at least one of those devices so they can get a hold of me more often). [I have said that the only thing she would give me is a "raspberry"--reference to a rude sound in American culture; hopefully not something cruder in another... ;) ]

Thanks again everyone,

Steve