I spent the past week pulling out my hair in frustration trying to book AeroMexico award tickets using both Delta Skymiles and Air France Flying Blue miles. Last Wednesday, I wrote a detailed post about AeroMexico's phantom award availability on the Delta website. While there may still be random occurrences that I'm not aware of, it does seem like the problem has mostly been fixed.
On Friday, I did my daily search using Delta's website for the flight I needed from SFO to CUN via MEX, all on AeroMexico. Of course, I used the multi-city search function with the non-stop option selected to get the most accurate results. Per usual, each segment of the AeroMexico itinerary showed up as available. Once I selected the last leg, however, instead of seeing an error message that typically indicates phantom award availability, I was shocked to see the summary page with taxes and fees listed!
AeroMexico award seats bookable on Delta!
I clicked all the way through, entered my credit card information, and amazingly, I had my itinerary booked without any problems. Just to be completely sure, I even called into Delta and reconfirmed my ticket with the agent. The total cost was 35,000 Skymiles plus $109.18 in taxes and fees.
Now the wheels in my head started turning. As some of you may already know, there are some hidden gems in the Air France Flying Blue award chart, mostly involving Latin America. A round-trip award ticket from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico only costs 25,000 miles, as opposed to 35,000 miles like most other programs. Going to Central America costs only 30,000 miles as opposed to 35,000 miles as well. Going to Northern South America costs 35,000 miles, which is identical to the American Airlines AAdvantage award chart. However, going to Southern South America costs only 50,000 miles as opposed to 60,000 miles like most other programs.
So, with a 24-hour cancellation guarantee on the Delta award booking I already made, I figured why not try booking the exact same itinerary using Flying Blue instead for 10,000 less miles? After all, they are an American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner, and I had a small stash of points just sitting there. I went onto the Flying Blue website and tried searching for the same itinerary, and there it was:
However, once I clicked through to the next page, I got this:
I could not book this itinerary online no matter what I tried. And since the Flying Blue award search engine is apparently even more broken than the infamous Delta website, I couldn't even do a multi-city search (try it and you'll see what I mean). Although it did seem to allow me to book each segment individually, but the cumulative price would total a whopping 50,000 miles instead.
So I called into Flying Blue... for the next five days. I must have spoken to two dozen agents, many of them I began to recognize by name because I would get connected to the same ones over and over again. And every single response was the same. They could see the award availability, but once they tried to grab the seats for me, it would fail. All of the agents blamed it on AeroMexico, saying they were not releasing the seats.
In the meantime, I was cancelling and rebooking the same itinerary like crazy over on Delta as a backup. I even called into Delta again and asked them if they could see how many award seats were available since I knew the AeroMexico award fare code was (X). They assured me they could see two seats available. At this point, I knew the issue was on the Flying Blue side.
Yesterday morning, I called into Flying Blue again, this time trying to elevate the situation to a higher level. Amazingly, I was connected to an understanding supervisor, who listened to my five-minute rant about how their website was broken and how Flying Blue agents could not book an award ticket that was clearly available. He apologized and told me he would get in direct contact with AeroMexico to see what the problem was.
A few hours later, I received a phone call back from the supervisor, saying that he had AeroMexico manually sell him the award seats, and everything was set! I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Then, as we were going through all the booking information, I noticed he got the return date wrong. My head nearly exploded at that point. Unfortunately, he said he needed to call AeroMexico again and start from scratch.
About another hour later, he called back again, and this time, everything was correct. Total cost for the award flight was 25,000 Flying Blue miles and $113.72. He didn't even bother adding on the usual €15 phone booking fee. I still don't know why the taxes and fees were higher than Delta's calculation, but by then, I could really care less about a $5.00 discrepancy. I just wanted my tickets booked and done with.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Flying Blue program is riddled with problems like these. Numerous other bookings I tried to make on their website also came back with the same technical error issue. And from the experiences I've described, it seems like calling in won't get the problems easily resolved either. As with most things in life, persistence appears to be the key. If you are 100% positive that the award seat is available, then keep hammering away until you can get a supervisor to do a manual sell for you. Otherwise, you'd be hard pressed to take advantage of any hidden gems on the Flying Blue award chart.
Now the wheels in my head started turning. As some of you may already know, there are some hidden gems in the Air France Flying Blue award chart, mostly involving Latin America. A round-trip award ticket from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico only costs 25,000 miles, as opposed to 35,000 miles like most other programs. Going to Central America costs only 30,000 miles as opposed to 35,000 miles as well. Going to Northern South America costs 35,000 miles, which is identical to the American Airlines AAdvantage award chart. However, going to Southern South America costs only 50,000 miles as opposed to 60,000 miles like most other programs.
So, with a 24-hour cancellation guarantee on the Delta award booking I already made, I figured why not try booking the exact same itinerary using Flying Blue instead for 10,000 less miles? After all, they are an American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner, and I had a small stash of points just sitting there. I went onto the Flying Blue website and tried searching for the same itinerary, and there it was:
Flying Blue website shows availablity
However, once I clicked through to the next page, I got this:
Cannot book this award ticket due to "technical reasons"
I could not book this itinerary online no matter what I tried. And since the Flying Blue award search engine is apparently even more broken than the infamous Delta website, I couldn't even do a multi-city search (try it and you'll see what I mean). Although it did seem to allow me to book each segment individually, but the cumulative price would total a whopping 50,000 miles instead.
So I called into Flying Blue... for the next five days. I must have spoken to two dozen agents, many of them I began to recognize by name because I would get connected to the same ones over and over again. And every single response was the same. They could see the award availability, but once they tried to grab the seats for me, it would fail. All of the agents blamed it on AeroMexico, saying they were not releasing the seats.
In the meantime, I was cancelling and rebooking the same itinerary like crazy over on Delta as a backup. I even called into Delta again and asked them if they could see how many award seats were available since I knew the AeroMexico award fare code was (X). They assured me they could see two seats available. At this point, I knew the issue was on the Flying Blue side.
Yesterday morning, I called into Flying Blue again, this time trying to elevate the situation to a higher level. Amazingly, I was connected to an understanding supervisor, who listened to my five-minute rant about how their website was broken and how Flying Blue agents could not book an award ticket that was clearly available. He apologized and told me he would get in direct contact with AeroMexico to see what the problem was.
A few hours later, I received a phone call back from the supervisor, saying that he had AeroMexico manually sell him the award seats, and everything was set! I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Then, as we were going through all the booking information, I noticed he got the return date wrong. My head nearly exploded at that point. Unfortunately, he said he needed to call AeroMexico again and start from scratch.
About another hour later, he called back again, and this time, everything was correct. Total cost for the award flight was 25,000 Flying Blue miles and $113.72. He didn't even bother adding on the usual €15 phone booking fee. I still don't know why the taxes and fees were higher than Delta's calculation, but by then, I could really care less about a $5.00 discrepancy. I just wanted my tickets booked and done with.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Flying Blue program is riddled with problems like these. Numerous other bookings I tried to make on their website also came back with the same technical error issue. And from the experiences I've described, it seems like calling in won't get the problems easily resolved either. As with most things in life, persistence appears to be the key. If you are 100% positive that the award seat is available, then keep hammering away until you can get a supervisor to do a manual sell for you. Otherwise, you'd be hard pressed to take advantage of any hidden gems on the Flying Blue award chart.
