Okay, maybe ”need” is a strong word, because roughly 99% of the time you’re not going to need to know this information in order to book award tickets. But there were a lot of questions earlier in the week about how I was able to get a Kenya Airways award issued that Ben (and multiple…
Continue reading: What You Need To Know About Long Selling Award Tickets
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Great post, Tiffany! Can this method also be applied to revenue tickets? If so, how and in what scenario?
Amazing post! These types of posts are the best content, even better than J and F trip reports.
I always find the best agents are the ones who get immediately excited when you tell them where you are going. They want to help you out and live vicariously through your trip.
@ Ethan -- I mean, the parts about being delightful and finding good agents can be 😉
But it's not really as relevant for revenue fares. There are times where you might need to request a specific fare bucket in order to use an upgrade instrument (like if you're using a United GPU or an American BXP1), or if you want to be in a certain earnings class, but that can pretty much all be done in the default reservations systems.
Tiffany, excellent info. I’ll implement this with FJ award space with AS Miles that don’t seem to be lining up but I can see on Expert Flyer. (Third and more FJ U class shows up for AS.)
@ Ralf -- Keep in mind that Alaska has access to two fewer seats on FJ than Expert Flyer shows, as a matter of policy. So if it's U3, Alaska can only get one seat.
Awesome post!
I usually book my awards with as much detail as possible. I had an especially awesome AA agent when we pieced together a bit of a crazy award. JFK-YVR-LAX-SFO-HND-HKG-BKK on CX-AA-JL-CX. I wanted to get to BKK on as many F products as possible, with CX F on the 747 before they retired them as the cherry on top. Took us a while but, we were both pleasantly surprised when the routing came back valid and priced as a single award. She said she had a lot of fun building that itinerary. So for sure getting a chatty agent who wants to look into stuff is the best bet.
Wow, thank you so much! Learned so much from this post.
Interesting tidbit: my grandmother was a travel agent back in the day when the "direct access" system was all their was – I remember her typing in lines of code into her SABRE terminal back in the 1980's. Amazing how much has changed, and yet how much has stayed the same!
@ ericnyc -- Hah, so funny! It's probably the exact same system as she used in many cases!
@Ethan - Yes, unless things have changed a good bit since my travel agent days. If the itinerary doen't auto-price, it may have to be sent to the fare desk, but that would only be for an unusual itinerary these days. There were a great number of times that a long sell was the best option for getting space. It was far from the norm, though, mostly when you couldn't book space where it showed available otherwise or some similar circumstance where you had conflicting information.
Long sells are relevant for revenue fares if you're interacting with a travel agent or airline agent. Things that may pop up on say ITA but can't be found anywhere online may be able to longsell through a GDS or by calling an airline and having them longsell (though most of the time if it's not coming up anywhere it is phantom space).
I am actually having some very similar issue. I’ve been working on a ANA RTW ticket.. there’s one Lufthansa (FRA-HEL) flight I can see availability on United, ExpertFlyer, and ANA’s own website. But every time when I call the agent to try to move to that flight, the agent tells me she cannot see the availability! Maybe a long sell can solve this problem? This has been so puzzling for me.
As a point of reference, is this the same as when we must call into AS to book CX awards? Is that long selling? It would be useful to have an example scenario aside from Ben’s to aid with further data points.
Had an experience with Aeroplan this spring. Flights would show on website for EVA from Bkk to Yyz, but once I selected and tried to confirm them the system would give me an error message. So I called Aeroplan and the same thing happened to them. I got an excellent agent who tried every single EVA flight to N.A., but none would be bookable the day I wanted, despite no flight having more than 50% occupancy. When I requested a long selling, the agents willingness waned, even the supervisor was not willing to even try. Eventually I got my tickets though, a few days later than planned, but still within my time window.
Tiffany, I got a question. I see you used Benjamin''s whole name on the booking. I only have name and surname, but my wife has a long collection of names. I generally only use her first and last when making reservations, but since you guys are a lot more traveled than me, what do you suggest? Full name, first and last or first, initials and last?
@ Bitzer -- The miles were coming from his SkyMiles account, so they already had all the info. First and last is generally fine for most carriers, as the middle name is rarely printed on the ticket. If they specifically need a middle name (Cathay Pacific asks for it when booking with American miles) it should be exactly as listed on the passport: https://onemileatatime.com/middle-name-airline-ticket/
@ Bitzer -- There were issues with Aeroplan being able to book EVA at all earlier this year, so you might have been caught up in that mess unknowingly.
I loved longselling when I worked with PARS during my NWA days. Loved that reservation system!
As someone who reads every one of the OMAAT articles, this is why we love you Tiffany! : ) You are so smart when it comes to this stuff, thank you so much for taking some time to explain what you know!
Thank you! I'm getting reading to book an award flight to Japan, and finding the Saver Award fare code for business class is really helpful.
What a fantastic post! Thanks very much for taking the time to write this (and to write it well), Tiffany.
@AdamR: yes and no. They have two systems, the web based and the direct booking one. The web based one is similar to what you see on the internet, and the direct booking one is the white screen with more complex looking menu. CX award can only be booked in the latter. You wil need to tell the agents to look for awards in ImageRes. Most importantly, look for separate segments of the trip. For example, instead of telling the agent to find award for JFK-HKG, you will need to tell them to find JFK-YVR, then glue that with YVR-HKG. The system won't show availability for entire trip.
I wanted to thank you for your tips on booking an award on kenya airlines using Delta miles....I was able to redeem business class Nairobi to lax through NY JFK on March 10 for 95,000 miles what a great redemption considering sometimes just the NY to lax can cost that many Miles...it took numerous calls...confusion when business class came back confirmed in coach.. but after getting the partner booking desk involved I was able to do it
Your welcome
Direct selling or long selling is not using a different system, it’s just a manual way within the same underlying GDS that the airlines use to access inventory. No sep PNR is created different to a PNR created made from a standard availability display and once confirmed all other entries and handling of the PNR ie pricing etc are the same. Issue is all airlines and TA’s these days rely on scripting / point and click technologies similar to consumer based booking tools which allow you to take a school leaver for example give them a weeks training and let them loose on the system. With this whats missing is a sound knowledge of the industry and how to use ‘native’ GDS language to effectively interrogate the system and think outside of the script. When I joined BA many years ago there was an 8 week reservations and ticketing course before being let loose on the phones, sadly now within a week anyone is an agent and they don’t really need to think as it’s click, point , sell. Creative reservation & ticketing knowledge is lost thru technology advancement and gone in the main as they are in fact not in the airlines interest as often lead to fare savings leading to an often ‘computer says no’ first response.
This is amazing @Tiffany thanks so much for this post! I will probably never need to use it but it's great to keep it in the back of my mind.
I realize this is a super old thread, but I haven't really seen anything else on this topic that's newer (here or elsewhere on the internet). Have you ever had any success getting Alaska to long sell a partner award?