How To Talk To Airline Phone Agents

You're clearly using the NATO phonetic alphabet, including saying "Delta" to airlines other than DL. (I've had agents who used the NATO alphabet but substituted "David" for "Delta".) Why then say "Sugar Yankee Delta" instead of "Sierra Yankee Delta"?

And does it really help to spell out airport codes? I usually just say the name ("Narita", "Hong Kong") or spell out the code with ordinary letters when that's commonly used ("LAX", "SFO", "JFK").

As another hint for getting the agents on your side, when starting some calls where I'm trying to resolve a problem (whether my fault or the airline's) I've often gotten good results by starting with "I have a problem I hope you can help me with."

What a great report! And such a great reminder that patience and a good attitude make a world of difference.

I have the Singapore BA customer service number on speed dial, multitudinous thanks to you, and was wondering if you knew of any other airlines with similar phone service sweet spots?

Agreed 100% Ben. I can tell in seconds if the agent isn't engaged, despite my best efforts. Connecting with them in some way to remind them there are two humans on the phone - them and I - makes a significant difference. I've had some return with answers like, "I'm not seeing First available...but - can you hold on? I'm going to check with a colleague and a supervisor to check on something else."

If one was rude to the agen or saw them as an order-taker, do you think they would have received a response like that?

Great info to share with others Ben! Nice!

You should have a weekly feature like that: Booking of the week. It may be a complicated one or a funny one or a unusual one. By phone or some tricky ones online. As you have already done (and still do) a wonderful job teaching how to find award space, a step by step booking post would be great.

how do you make sure you get the lowest priced awards?(using the least miles)

I am trying to book
AUS-LHR
*Open Jaw* & * Stop Over *
ATH-PVG
PVG-AUS
on United.

Does that work for stopovers?

agreed, being polite is key... and if the agent is still mean, just say thank you and hang up... they would not help anyway.

@ masterspinner -- Using United miles? Your open jaw has to be at the turnaround point, so in this case would need to be in Asia and not Europe. But if you made it a stopover instead, that should work.

@ meegabroad -- I find the BA call center to be the one with the biggest difference between their foreign one and US one. For what it's worth I also prefer the French Air France call center to their US one, though the difference isn't nearly as big.

Nice post, thank you. How many miles that itinerary took?

@ Rich -- Maybe it's my Germanness, but I struggle with the word "sierra." When I say it, it sounds more like "zero." And yes, for the more complicated codes I do find it helps to spell them out phonetically.

@ lana -- First class between the US and Australia costs 140,000 miles roundtrip.

since you have three 'depart" on your itinerary... does it look in DM system like you have a stop-over in NRT?

Just a tremendous post. What an expert you are!

Love how courteous you are, too.

@onemileatatime
which airlines, other than US, have you successfully gotten to bend the rules for award routing?

@ Lantean -- That happens anytime you have a connection that isn't same day, but they still don't view it as a stopover.

@ purcitron -- Well I wouldn't even call it bending rules, since they don't publish rules. With most other airlines the computers price award tickets.

@Ben, what I'm dying to know is if you ended Call #3 with a hearty, "Bye, Felicia!"

I currently have an American Award in first from HNL-SFO- ORD. There was a slight schedule change (15 minutes) to one flight and i'd like to switch to the HNL-DFW-ORD flight due to them using 767's on the route. The change doesn't really affect me at all, but i've read many times people having success getting better flights when a small change hits. I've called a few times and have gotten nowhere. Are there any specific tips for getting them to change the routing on such a slight change?

@ Shaun -- Frankly that's not something I've ever done. Usually a small change is enough to get an award redeposited, but it's unlikely they'll open up space because of an inconsequential change. They'd have to go through inventory management, and they'd need a good reason to open those seats. Sorry.

@Shaun - I changed an AA KOA-LAX-ORD ticket to HNL-ORD last February on the first call with no problem. I don't know if the policy has changed or if I just lucked out with a great agent (with whom I was congenial and polite). It is certainly worth going for the 767!

Those are great strategies for phone booking and I agree being polite does help. I do have to add though that some agents really are awful at least on US Airways and United. They have no authority to do anything that isn't in the script and are hard to understand sometimes because of an accent. The fact you had a pleasant call with AA EXP line isn't surprising it should be that way. Call US Air or united as a non elite and see how helpful they are.

lucky, do you have any experience calling UA? Do you know which hours get which call center as it seems certain times of the day you get better UA agents.

Wow that sounded complicated - but it´s lovely to see how emotional intelligence works 🙂

Would have been a much more illustrative example if you'd left your Dividend Miles account number in the transcript! 😉

Seriously, this kind of example is very useful for those of us with little experience.

I agree with the earlier commenter that using the phonetic alphabet is a bit weird when not required to resolve ambiguity. No "normal" person is going to say "Lima Alpha X-ray" instead of L-A-X. In fact, most people would have no clue about the airport codes (LAX would be an exception as it is commonly used). So, your strategy seems inconsistent to me. You're trying to play dumb ("Is that something you can help me with?") or at least trying not to emphasize that you know far more about the agent's job than they do, yet you then descend into aviation geekery.

@ anon -- Really depends what you're hoping to do and how you define "good" (do you want bad good or good good?). In general if you ask for help with international reservations you'll get a US agent.

The potential frustrations of dealing with call centers are one reason I take whether or not a FF program has online booking for the awards I want before I get too heavily invested in it.

This was a great post. Also just a tip, recently I've had to do some changes to an Avios reservation outside the operating hours of the Singapore BA office. After I got the busy signal the first few times I tried to reach the Executive Club line, I attempted to call 1-800 AIRWAYS to see if I could get someone to at least transfer me to an Executive Club agent faster. The first agent I had refused to touch an Avios reservation and refused to transfer me, the second one seemed to have issues with the itinerary and my phone dropped the call, but the third one changed it for me no problem. The lesson I learned was that some BA agents on the 1-800-AIRWAYS line are willing to work with Avios reservations and the wait times are significantly shorter there (like the most I waited to speak to an agent was 5 minutes so its still worth hanging up and calling again). It's definitely worth a try if you can't wait for the Singapore office to open and you don't want to deal with the nightmarish Executive Club line.

Now this is a great post. And now we know why businesses like yours (your award booking service, not the blog) exist - I certainly would not have the patience myself to spend potentially hours going through this.

Good evening Ben,
I am a big fan of your blog and read it religiously. I love your trip reports and I am a small time mileage earner and have earned all my points through your site (Chase Sapphire and AA Citi).
Thank you.

As a customer service agent who works in a call centre, there are a few points I would like to comment on...

1. Be polite. 100% true. I can not tell you the amount of times I have gone over and beyond my job duties to assist a customer who was polite and gone out of my way to make the life of rude customer as miserable as can be.

2. Hang up and call again. While in essence this does work. I mean, you have a large call centre with 150+ employees, what are the chances you will get the same agent, right? However, agents talk and leave notes. If you wanted to make an illegal routing and the agent wasn't letting you and you hang up and call again, you may get an agent near the first who would see this and tell the new agent, NO. Or simply, an agent over hears another agent saying "Oh yes, from JFK-LAX-HKG... No problem sir"

Also, agents leave notes. Even if you do not give any details, they probably have your account open by simply searching using your phone number. And yes, they leave long, detailed, graphic messages. All you need is to get Miss Rules-By-The-Book who sees the following notes to take matters into her own hands:

01/01/14 10:34 "Customer hung up while enquiring about award availibility."

01/01/14 10:45 "Customer tried making JFK-LAX-ICN-HGK-SIN-NRT-LAX booking before getting disconnected"

01/01/14 10:58 "Customer asked about....."

And just like that she can put a prompt on your account which every agent will see any time they access your account saying something like this "customer seems to hang up often when doesn't like what they are hearing..."

You get the point.

Bottom line, as long as you are pleasant to the agent, and aren't obvious with the hang up's you could get away with it.

All you need for is a note like this:

"Customer trying to make illegal routing and gets very angry when told no."

Great article Ben! I like the general step by step approach of this post. It illustrates well the patience one must have in attempting to book an award ticket. Plus, it confirms how valuably important it is to do one's homework before engaging on that phone call, when being polite to the agent is truly an imperative here. Which just goes to show how true the idiom "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar", really is!

BTW I agree with @carlos on the benefits of doing a 'Booking of the week or month' feature. It would be most helpful to all us readers and especially the uninitiated.

Outstanding! Thanks so much. (I'll point out that the "be polite" works well in many areas when dealing with workers that interact with the public all day.)

Curious Lucky, when you book for clients, how do you represent yourself to the agent? Do you have to pretend to be the client?

Yes BUT don't you think that HKG-BNK-SYD would have been a "better" route with Emirates showers on this 5th freedom route?

Have this one bookmarked. I think it's one of the best posts I've ever read. And that isn't disparaging of other posts. I just think this is such a practical example of how to manage the payoff in this game.

@italdesign Actually that's an interesting question. I help family members make awards reservations all the time and despite multiple attempts to add me as an authorized account user I often end up having to pretend to be the relative I'm calling on behalf of. I'd also be curious to know if Lucky has a workaround.

@ Simon -- Thanks for the insight, and for reading!

@ italdesign -- Most of the time I say I'm just their travel planner, which works fine.

@ Cory -- Thanks for the kind words!

Great post as usual Lucky! Just curious - do you think for a SF to New Zealand on US Airways, do you think they will let you route via Europe? I know US Airways has bizzare rules but wanted to get your thoughts on what might be relatively "doable" itinerary to book. Thought about: SFO-JFK-LHR-DXB-MEL-AKL, AKL-MEL-KUL-LHR-JFK-SFO? Thanks!

@ Billy -- Highly unlikely, definitely wouldn't expect to be able to do that, unfortunately.

Thanks Ben! Do you think JFK-LHR-DXB-MEL is more-doable for a US Airways US to Oz award? And/or is routing through Asia more realistic. Thanks again!

@ Billy -- That's definitely more likely, but that routing is still a stretch. Much more likely to have luck trying to route through Asia.

Should've ended the last call with "bye Felicia."

@ Lucky - a little late to the party (catching up on posts after vacation) but wanted to thank you for the very useful post 🙂

Hi Lucky,

I know Singapore Airlines has that crazy backtracking policy. I called Singapore to feed her the following routes: JFK-FRA-NCE (NCE being slightly backtracking from FRA). She put me hold for a couple of minutes and quoted me the 80,000 miles. I just wanted to be sure before I tranfser from my Ultimate Reward account. Does that sound correct to you?

@ Andre -- For first class? Yep, that sounds correct.

Coming from a Res Agent, I enjoyed reading this. Just a few comments...

Yes, it's wonderful when a passenger has specific flight numbers and a routing picked out. But the info we need first is Origin/Destination, and Dates. I can't start searching until I have those...so getting those to us first goes a long way. Flight numbers do nothing for me until I know where you're going from and to. From there, yes, we do love that info and we appreciate when someone's done their homework. But give us O/D, Dates, # of people, and class of service first!

I'm well aware that not all agents are great at their job (in fact many are just the opposite)...but I don't need airport codes unless it's somewhere really out there. Sydney, Narita, SIngapore...I (and the vast majority of agents), don't need those codes. Kuala Lumpur I know, but many don't, so that's fine...but really. It's almost a little insulting when someone gives the the airport code for LAX or Tokyo. We have to know the major (like, vast majority of US ones, and 100 or so international ones, more geared to our alliance's hubs/major destinations) codes in the first 2 weeks of training. A passenger may think Bali or Hyderabad or Split is rare...but I see them several times a week. (This is mostly a pet peeve of mine, probably because I'm an aviation nerd in addition to my job. Maybe other agents appreciate this).

But being nice and patient definitely goes a LONG way. Award tickets are usually complicated, using multiple systems and we're at the mercy of another airline in many cases. Passengers that know that going in means I'm much more willing to go overboard to help. I like doing award tickets, it's a challenge. I love finding something from nothing.

Call Handle Time is a concern for every phone agent, especially since it can affect bonuses...but the competent ones likely exceed in this anyways, and a long call here and there isn't the end of the world. I've spend 2 hours with someone doing a 5 city Europe/Asia Award with someone, exploring multiple options to get the lowest rate because they were patient, pleasant to talk to, and flexible.

And if you say you're flexible, actually define what you mean! I can't tell you how often someone will say they're flexible, and can leave any time in a 15 day window, which affects how I search for a flight, but when I come back with something a week off of their ideal date, they say they can't do it. This is one thing that will frustrate the agent you're talking with faster than anything else. Give your limits early on.

Thanks Lucky. Yes, this will be in First. I'm thinking SFO-JFK-FRA-NCE. SFO-JFK segment will be on Virgin America, because it's not available yet on United. Will 80,000 mile that SQ quoted me, will change because of the Virgin America segment?

@ Andre -- No, you can't include Virgin America on an award with Singapore travel. You need to book that as a separate award.