I just had an odd experience.
I was trying to book the following routing, F award. No stopovers, everything was the next available flight:
MDL-BKK (TG)
BKK-HKG (TG)
HKG-ICN (OZ)
ICN-FRA (OZ)
FRA-EWR (UA)
EWR-ALB (UA)
ALB-BOS (US)
2 agents just gave up and told me it was too complicated. However, the third agent was extremely competent and I spent something close to 3 hours on the phone with her trying to do this. First, the computer wouldn't price at all. So, I said, let's simplify to MDL-BKK-ICN-FRA-EWR. That still didn't work. I think that's a perfectly reasonable award to expect, so we got a few supervisors involved. Eventually the rate desk came into it too.
After a while I was told about a "new directive from United about awards booked from Asia to North America via the Atlantic that connect in Japan or the Koreas. I was read this directive (or whatever it was) verbatim. Basically it limits awards to 3 stops. But it also has some rather vague routing language about carriers and fares.
So, we tried cutting further. BKK-ICN-FRA-EWR did not price. Whatever, I said. Let's just try ICN-FRA-EWR. That did not price either!!! The agents were as perplexed as I was. Finally we tried ICN-FRA-EWR as LH and UA sectors. That worked. But for some reason we were unable to get the OZ to price with the UA.
Does someone have information about these changes? If I can't even ticket ICN-FRA-EWR on the carriers I want, MP is pretty much as useless as Skypesos. But I don't think MDL-BKK-ICN-FRA-EWR is unreasonable. So what is going on? Just computer glitches? Heavyhanded policy change? $misek?
I was trying to book the following routing, F award. No stopovers, everything was the next available flight:
MDL-BKK (TG)
BKK-HKG (TG)
HKG-ICN (OZ)
ICN-FRA (OZ)
FRA-EWR (UA)
EWR-ALB (UA)
ALB-BOS (US)
2 agents just gave up and told me it was too complicated. However, the third agent was extremely competent and I spent something close to 3 hours on the phone with her trying to do this. First, the computer wouldn't price at all. So, I said, let's simplify to MDL-BKK-ICN-FRA-EWR. That still didn't work. I think that's a perfectly reasonable award to expect, so we got a few supervisors involved. Eventually the rate desk came into it too.
After a while I was told about a "new directive from United about awards booked from Asia to North America via the Atlantic that connect in Japan or the Koreas. I was read this directive (or whatever it was) verbatim. Basically it limits awards to 3 stops. But it also has some rather vague routing language about carriers and fares.
So, we tried cutting further. BKK-ICN-FRA-EWR did not price. Whatever, I said. Let's just try ICN-FRA-EWR. That did not price either!!! The agents were as perplexed as I was. Finally we tried ICN-FRA-EWR as LH and UA sectors. That worked. But for some reason we were unable to get the OZ to price with the UA.
Does someone have information about these changes? If I can't even ticket ICN-FRA-EWR on the carriers I want, MP is pretty much as useless as Skypesos. But I don't think MDL-BKK-ICN-FRA-EWR is unreasonable. So what is going on? Just computer glitches? Heavyhanded policy change? $misek?