I just bought a ticket on Travelocity to get to YYZ for my next trip. It's on Continental, but has NW metal on the outbound and CO metal on the return, because that was the best in terms of timing. Does being NW Gold get me anything - better seats or maybe upgrades on the NW metal?

I tried to book through nwa.com, but it wouldn't show the CO flights. When I called NW, they priced it out at over $500, and continental.com wouldn't show the NW flights at all, so Travelocity got my money.

Also, does anyone know how I can credit the flight miles to Delta, and would that interfere with any possible upgrades? I'm lost here, because I've always either booked through NW or flown non-SkyTeam.

Others with more experience can tell you more - or you can search the NW forum. But Continental does upgrade NW elites automatically, tho I think you are a little behind the OnePass elites in priority (naturally). I was upgraded on 1 of 4 flights on my last Co trip.

Whose letter claimed 30k miles for ow upgrade - yours or theirs?
That should be allowed with this fare.

Personally, I would not let this end with this. File complaints with DOT and BBB. They are lying - this fare was / is changeable, and they should not be allowed to change that so long after purchase.

The first few people have completed their trips to Bucharest. I put my report in the BUH/AMS thread in community. Hopefully others will as well.

Hi !

I just want to share my experience regarding changing flights with this ticket.

I have to following routing in january : YYZ-AMS-OTP-AMS-YYZ all KLM metal.

I originally had only a one hour turnaround in OTP, and i wanted to change that to a later flight to avoid problem. When i called NW reservations, they didn't wanted to change anything, even telling me that i was lucky that they let me fly on such a cheap ticket.

I was in AMS last week and i went to the KLM reservations desk to ask if they could do someting. It took 2 minutes to the friendly KLM lady to change the flight with a smile ! So it appear that KLM seems to be more flexible about change that NW is.

it would be great if people would do this, it would almost be like a FAQ to a limited extent

I'm pretty familiar with BUH, and the 1 hour turn at BUH should be perfectly fine if you are not required to check in luggage -- especially as the plane coming into BUH is the plane going out of BUH. With carry-on only, when going to BUH, there's a sign for "connecting flights" which indicates that you need to go to the right instead of going up the escalator to arrivals/baggage claim/immigration.

At the connection "area", there's generally one security guard there with the other needing to be called over in the event of connecting passengers so that they can go through the WTMD and have carry-on screened. They will probably ask to where you are connecting and where you came from, so just have a copy of your itinerary available. Then go to the departure gate desk and the contracted staff that KLM uses there will be able to issue the boarding pass. Once you have the boarding pass, SkyTeam ElitePlus members may use the contracted lounge "downstairs" from the departure gate level. (This is a shared lounge at BUH, but KLM has arrangements so that all ST Elite+ flying in coach can use it too.)

Additional FYI: For those who are coming from the US or Canada and transiting AMS on the way to BUH but don't want to lug their carry-on items on-board (or risk having their liquids/gels tossed after initial arrival into AMS), there are airside lockers at AMS that work pretty well for storage and cost only €4-5 for a 24-hour period. These lockers works perfectly fine for US/Canada-AMS-BUH-AMS-XYZ flights (where XYZ is any Schengen or non-Schengen destination being flown on these tickets mentioned in the thread); just make sure to claim your bags airside before going through immigration or heading to "arrivals" upon returning to AMS (regardless of whether AMS is your destination or just a connection to some airport beyond).

nice post, great details, thank you as this is just what I was wondering.

I forgot to note earlier that some are saying that YYZ NW staff is often enough loathe to "short-check" bags (i.e., check bags to an intermediate destination on an itinerary) and they may even use the "short-checking bags on an international itinerary is not permitted because of _____ (e.g., security reasons, US government, etc.)" lines. Just something to keep in mind if wanting to drop off luggage somewhere en route to BUH or some other point.

The problem is that i'm using this flight to move to Holland, so i will have checked luggages and they will probably be very heavy...

Of course i could stay in AMS and not take the AMS-OTP flight, but i want to use the return portion of the ticket.

I ask the KLM reservation lady if i could check my luggage YYZ-AMS-OTP-AMS so i dont need to recover them in OTP. She said probably. Probably was not good enough for me... so i took the safe path of a later flight.

make sure u also file a complaint w/ the bbb...

You seem to be doing the right things for your situation. Your ticket has AMS as a stopover on the return, right?

I'm curious on what luggage tag NW's system will kick out on check-in at YYZ. (I'm guessing that at YYZ it will at least kick out YYZ-AMS-OTP but won't necessarily kick out YYZ-AMS-OTP-AMS.)

You won't get any of your elite upgrades on NW/CO if you credit your miles to DL. They won't know that you are NW elite if they don't have your WorldPerks number in the reservation.

please don't put trip reports in the community thread - communitybuzz is not the forum for trip reports and we all want the thread to stay in communitybuzz! - don't we? splitting threads later and moving those posts to the trip report forum is alot of work for the moderators.

regards

chrissxb
co-moderator
communitybuzz!

I just checked my Miles Safari point total and was pleasantly surprised that I received an additional 30 points for the AMS-OTP leg of my Bucharest trip. So I received 130 points for the trip. I guess I didn't get another 30 points for the OTP-AMS leg because on the itinerary OTP-AMS and AMS-YYZ were grouped together, even though they were on different days. If I get that many points on my next OTP trip, it will be worth trying to reach the next 100-point level to get an additional 5,000 miles. Cool.