Thought I'd share an experience with the other side.
I never realised how good we have it with OW (or more specifically the AA desk and most CX stations) until I guided a friend through with his STARLITE (RWSPCL) booking last night. He couldn't use the rather handy online portal (which would've otherwise saved LOTS of time and energy) as his itinerary contains UA SYD-MEL, a sector which is conditional upon an international connection for legal reasons and apparently requires human intervention to approve.
Friend has the below itin:
VIE-xDME-xSIN-KUL-SIN-xSYD-MEL-AKL-LAX-JFK-xFRA-VIE
Would've been easier to remove that SYD-MEL segment and do SIN-MEL directly which would then enable the use of the online portal, but he wanted to ride the A380.
Friend is based in VIE, native German speaker so no issues of language barrier here. Decided that he wanted to plate on UA due to the low fuel surcharges. His TA couldn't help for a few days as she needed managerial approval for "strange products" (her actual words, translation from German) and the manager was on leave.
We hunted around for UA's equivalent of a central ATW desk but couldn't find anything and the UA website seemed pretty sparse when it comes to info on RTWs. It's like they don't want you to find out about them. No UA ticketing facility in VIE, and so he called UA FRA.
Now AA can usually come up with a 20 segment itinerary in bang bang <10 mins, even with the routings I tend to come up with....
Meantime I was chatting with him in real time on msn. The following transpired in his convo with the lovely but almost totally incompetent UA FRA agent:
1) Lots of being put on hold as the agent ran around to various lines of authority to make sure the fare wasn't something invented by some crackjob who had nothing better to do.
2) "You can fly Emirates, there are seats available!" "What do you mean, they're not a Star Alliance member?" ----> resulted in yet another hold
3) 20 mins later.... grand total of 2 segments booked.
4) On hold for what seemed like almost the entire evening while she verified left, right, centre, in and out.
5) Took another hour to finish the booking and generate the record locator.
6) Emailed him itinerary, told it'd take a day to price
7) Discovered that booking classes were entirely wrong, and he wanted to upgrade to premium economy on NZ AKL-LAX but was instead booked into business (!)
8) Rang back to rebook, hold period of 20 mins as the agent verified with her supervisor RE booking classes.
9) Finally done after another 20 mins.
And after what seemed like an eternity he finally got his itinerary set up.
Phew...................
On the plus side they didn't knock back the itinerary despite only operating a trans tasman codeshare, and domestic flights - most of his segments are SQ and NZ with the odd LH and OS short hauls.
Today he rang back and got the pricing, and thankfully the pricing people are a lot more competent than the call centre agent and got the pricing right. Paid and ticketed.
They wouldn't assign seats for him on partner airlines though (not even on their MEL-AKL codeshare operated by NZ), so he now has to call the others himself.
Echos my experience booking Circle Pacifics and Circle Asias with Star somewhat, but at least people i dealt with at the NZ and SQ offices were more competent. Back then though they had no "direct access" to seats of fellow alliance members and it usually took at least a week or 2 to 1) get seats booked 2) get a price quote record. I gladly paid my TA the service fee when urgent.
Anyone wants to volunteer checking out Skyteam?
I never realised how good we have it with OW (or more specifically the AA desk and most CX stations) until I guided a friend through with his STARLITE (RWSPCL) booking last night. He couldn't use the rather handy online portal (which would've otherwise saved LOTS of time and energy) as his itinerary contains UA SYD-MEL, a sector which is conditional upon an international connection for legal reasons and apparently requires human intervention to approve.
Friend has the below itin:
VIE-xDME-xSIN-KUL-SIN-xSYD-MEL-AKL-LAX-JFK-xFRA-VIE
Would've been easier to remove that SYD-MEL segment and do SIN-MEL directly which would then enable the use of the online portal, but he wanted to ride the A380.
Friend is based in VIE, native German speaker so no issues of language barrier here. Decided that he wanted to plate on UA due to the low fuel surcharges. His TA couldn't help for a few days as she needed managerial approval for "strange products" (her actual words, translation from German) and the manager was on leave.
We hunted around for UA's equivalent of a central ATW desk but couldn't find anything and the UA website seemed pretty sparse when it comes to info on RTWs. It's like they don't want you to find out about them. No UA ticketing facility in VIE, and so he called UA FRA.
Now AA can usually come up with a 20 segment itinerary in bang bang <10 mins, even with the routings I tend to come up with....
Meantime I was chatting with him in real time on msn. The following transpired in his convo with the lovely but almost totally incompetent UA FRA agent:
1) Lots of being put on hold as the agent ran around to various lines of authority to make sure the fare wasn't something invented by some crackjob who had nothing better to do.
2) "You can fly Emirates, there are seats available!" "What do you mean, they're not a Star Alliance member?" ----> resulted in yet another hold
3) 20 mins later.... grand total of 2 segments booked.
4) On hold for what seemed like almost the entire evening while she verified left, right, centre, in and out.
5) Took another hour to finish the booking and generate the record locator.
6) Emailed him itinerary, told it'd take a day to price
7) Discovered that booking classes were entirely wrong, and he wanted to upgrade to premium economy on NZ AKL-LAX but was instead booked into business (!)
8) Rang back to rebook, hold period of 20 mins as the agent verified with her supervisor RE booking classes.
9) Finally done after another 20 mins.
And after what seemed like an eternity he finally got his itinerary set up.
Phew...................
On the plus side they didn't knock back the itinerary despite only operating a trans tasman codeshare, and domestic flights - most of his segments are SQ and NZ with the odd LH and OS short hauls.
Today he rang back and got the pricing, and thankfully the pricing people are a lot more competent than the call centre agent and got the pricing right. Paid and ticketed.
They wouldn't assign seats for him on partner airlines though (not even on their MEL-AKL codeshare operated by NZ), so he now has to call the others himself.
Echos my experience booking Circle Pacifics and Circle Asias with Star somewhat, but at least people i dealt with at the NZ and SQ offices were more competent. Back then though they had no "direct access" to seats of fellow alliance members and it usually took at least a week or 2 to 1) get seats booked 2) get a price quote record. I gladly paid my TA the service fee when urgent.
Anyone wants to volunteer checking out Skyteam?
Last edited:
)
