I was in Tampa this past weekend for Frequent Traveler University, and hosted a session on Sunday afternoon with Gary entitled ”Theory to Practice: How to Find Award Space and Construct Your Booking.” Ultimately finding award space is only one part of the booking process, though.
Continue reading: Booking a Saudia award, bourbon, and time travel…
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
You've got Riyadh in Yemen on your map... Riyadh is more or less in the middle of Saudi Arabia.
That being said, how on earth are you visiting Saudi Arabia? Tourist visas are not generally available to non-Muslims.
@ Tyler -- Whoops, I was careless with the map, fixed now.
I believe Saudi Arabia allows transits of up to 18 hours without a visa, though you can't leave the airport. Again though, the intent wasn't to find a routing anyone would necessarily want to fly, but to demonstrate the challenges of booking a partner airline that can't be booked online.
RYI is in Yemen now? something off with that map ....should be near the middle of the peninsula..
Having been there first hand to wtch this "show"' I must say it was both entertaining and frightening...entertaining for the obvious reasons, but frightening that the agents are really that clueless.
It's always fun trying to book US Airways tickets, especially if they leave just after midnight as well... What sort of bourbon did hackmytrip bring?
FDW
Did you guys make a video of the calls that you can share? Always enjoy a good laugh...
This is an eye opener for a beginner to mid-level expert like me specially who is almost always looking for 4+ seats. Just out of curiosity, I presume you were looking for 1 seat only? and for economy? Did I get that right?
@ caveman -- The Delta award had seven business class seats on the outbound and three on the return, though we were only booking for two. The US Airways award was just for one person.
There are many lessons here for how to better train your staff at the airline call center, and maybe how to provide them with better tools to help them be both accurate and efficient.
Excellent write-up Ben. I go through this almost every day....sometimes fun but in the long run it gets annoying.
Hmmm moral of the story? Probably that the agents are poorly trained on booking partner airline award tickets. Then again, I doubt most of their calls involve international itineraries of their star alliance partner airlines, but rather, domestic flights on their own US Airways metal. Have you ever redeemed flights on US Airways metal and if so, were your experience(s) similar to this one?
I do wonder whether AA will give them extra training after the merger is complete.
I think it is hilarious that alcohol was needed to get a ticket on a dry airline.
Thanks for posting this. I can't help but to think that airlines don't put much effort into training their call center employees on booking award travel precisely because their incompetence presents a barrier that prevents everyone but those willing to be incredibly patient and persistent from actually booking anything. Those who give up in frustration just let their miles expire, or, what, buy magazine subscriptions? That's GREAT from the airline's point of view.
Lucky, I think that there may actually be some flaw in their computer systems responsible for the confusion with dates and times. It happens almost 100% of the time, even with agents who are otherwise good.
Last time I spoke with US, the agent even alluded to the issues they have with departures around midnight -- it seems departures after midnight are all listed in the system as departing the previous day.
I was once told that the computers at US don't change days at 23:59, but rather at 04:59 the following morning. Haha!
Really funny...Have you ever tried speaking to executives at the airlines about some of these issues with the horrible training their staff gets?
I was also there in person for these calls and I think it's worth mentioning that the Delta employee volunteered to "save" the itinerary after 15 minutes so it wouldn't disappear. Good tip for those trying to book complicated (or not-terribly-complicated) routings!
I always use the expression "I'm coming back from the future" in cases like this. Maybe because it makes the concept sounds so metaphysical they just go along with it.
I have great fondness for US Airways agents....
I am glad to see the result of the story for booking with US Airways. So hilarious
Ben, I have a question on a trick you shared during FTU about saving fuel surcharge on a revenue ticket. I remember an additional segment is been added and that brings the total price down. Could you explain it more? Thanks.
Inconsistent CSR training is why I prefer doing stuff online although in case of airline's some of their sites are antiquated.
Could someone explain to me why HND-LAX segment (and ones like it) cause so much headaches? Is it because they don't just enter Airline, Flight Number, Departure Date/Time but also have to enter Arrival information and computer systems don't like that?
@ Ivan Y -- So in this case it actually seems to be a legitimate issue with US Airways' computers. The issue isn't that the flight arrives the previous day, but rather the issue is with the connecting flight. Segments have to be in "sequence," and they fall out of sequence when segments appear to the computer to be out of chronological order.
@ Lucky - ohh... so the computer sees that HKG-HND arrives later [using local time] then HND-LAX and doesn't like that?
Programming for different times have to be tricky. Dealt with it for my mom's most recent trip - BA's award changes are cut-off 24 hours before departure (local time; seems to be enforced/programmed OK) but SQ, supposedly (based on what multiple CSRs told me) is OK with changes as long as it's not the same calendar day as departure, i.e. a 5:00 pm flight on Oct. 2nd can be changed through 11:59 pm on Oct. 1st (otherwise, it's a ~$75 fee). In practice, though, I'd changed flights as late as 3-4 am the day of departure so I am thinking it's probably more like 12 hour cut-off.
(Sorry to get off-topic... That SQ thing still makes me curious but I didn't feel like asking about it since we benefited a couple of times from the lack of a fee.)
@ Ivan Y -- Sorry, let me rephrase. Say you're flying HND-LAX-SFO. HND-LAX leaves on the 29th and lands on the 28th, and then LAX-SFO departs on the 28th. The computer gets thrown off because it seems the HND-LAX segment on the 29th and then the LAX-SFO segment on the 28th, and assumes the ticket isn't synced correctly.
@ Lucky - my bad! The map is small and I can't read, apparently, so I missed the fact there was LAX-SFO segment 🙁
It is not that American call center agents are poorly trained, but that they are just incompetent. They do not know geography and are not capable of learning it. Sad, but very true. And what do US corporations do? Outsource to the Philippines, where the intelligence level is one iota higher. Sad, but true
In my experience AA agents are by far the most knowledgeable closely followed by United's India call center. Delta agents, as usual, are by far the worst. At least with US Air we can expect to get a laugh out of it. Delta is just a joke all around.
Having bashed DL a lot, it depends on who you get.
I have to tell you the Cincinnati and Chisholm centers as well as the SLC center are very good.
That is what you get for the PM and DM lines.
The regular folks get the worst of it.
Eliteness has rare benefits on DL.
@ Mr. Cool - technically speaking, no visa is needed for transitting through same airport in Russia (24-hr limit), although it seems that US State Dept. does recommend getting a transit visa regardless.
Lucky -- I'm serious about this. You should consider having pointspros do just the phone call part of booking an award. Maybe this is not something you'd be interested in, but I think there's a market for it. I usually am booking awards for my family -- so, 4 people, and the cost of award booking services gets a bit too much for me, since there usually is a charge for the extra people. But by far, the hardest part of the process is not just the finding of flights, but the booking of flights even after I've found space. I would gladly pay someone who is experienced in dealing with these folks get the award booked, with me doing all the leg work to figure out the booking. Just a thought. Again, probably not in the business model, but for what it's worth.
It seems like the computer problem could be beneficial if someone wanted to create a second stopover at the connecting city (LA in this case).
To all commenting on the call agent's clueless-ness:
We can't blame the call agents, but we can blame the lack of training & high turnover at these call centers. Most of them are making $8/hour with little to no college education. Let's give them a break.
Makes me appreciate the trials an agent goes through to book a complicated rewards ticket with an airline company. Given I would take more time, money well spent.
I have a ton of miles in my US account because I have never been able to steel myself to deal with the phone booking after reading all of these kinds of stories.
But I will absolutely agree that having a patient attitude when dealing with the agents from any airline is very helpful. And just as important is knowing which flights should have availability that you can spoon feed them. I've done it with AA a few times for relatively straightforward partner bookings. Their agents seem to be a bit more on the ball and have always been quite eager to make sure I got what I wanted. Sometimes they don't see the same flights I want right away so I have to politely insist a bit but it usually works out. Same with UA and Aeroplan for the most part. But I did struggle a bit with one of their agents once when I wanted to book what was a fairly short connection at NRT that she didn't believe was legal. Ultimately I was able to book it.
I need to try one of these more complicated trips some time.
When booking on Saudia can we include the trips to JFK from your local airport on Delta and still make a business class trip for 120k?
@ Raj -- Assuming you can find saver level award space between your home airport and JFK then absolutely.