Jaunted

Third, the BA mini-strike sucked. By the end of everything I had called American Airlines international booking 7 times over 3 nights, flipping the itinerary one way, then another, then another. We did finally manage to rebook most of my original itinerary, though I still have that overnight in Budapest and now I'm sandwiched in the middle of 5 seats in stab-me-in-the-face 22E for LAX-LHR.

After the strike got called off I had to dial up call #6 and then call #7. At a certain point things got smoother, although that may have been a function of decreasing patience on everyone's part. "Can you check El Al flight so and so on day such and such from SOF-TLV" goes a lot faster than "I need to travel from SOF to TLV, is there anything you can do to help me please?" Ditto for "No, sir, that just won't work" as opposed to "Well you see, company policy is blah blah blah and so I really apologize but I don't think I can do that for you."

Nonetheless, the original itinerary simply wasn't available. The seats just weren't there. Not great. But there's is one very important upshot of the last call, which alone justifies this post. More on that below too.

And so without further ado, what we've learned:

· Asking "What about this way" is your friend. What about a new date? What about a different partner airline? What about a less straightforward combination of cities? Booking reps will ask the computer to spit out an itinerary and may try one or two of the most obvious alternatives. After that you need to be creative. Which brings us immediately to...

· We've hit you over the head with this tip, but it can't be emphasized enough. Do a little bit of your own research before asking for booking help. Go to the sites of partner airlines and see what they're reporting as far as open seats. Without getting too technical, computer searching is really, really hard and sometimes the booking algorithms don't spit out everything that's available. Ask to check for seats on specific flights on specific routes that you know exist.

· Don't be bashful about calling repeatedly. During that 7th call—literally during the call—an awards seat opened up on the SOF-TLV flight that I was able to book on miles. Even if you're not walking in with your own research, seats open up all the time. An awards booking that wasn't open yesterday might open up tomorrow. You'll have to burn some extra time but there's no shame in trying to get customer service from a customer service center. The first two agents had originally told me that SOF-TLV partner flights didn't exist. If you suspect something's wrong, sometimes it's worth working things through with another operator.

· Choose the airlines where you pool your miles very carefully. It's not just a matter of choosing one carrier in each alliance—oneworld, SkyTeam, or Sky Alliance—and sticking with them. It's also a matter of choosing the right airline. Obviously if you live in a regional market you'll choose the airline that serves that market. But things get interesting if you're in a large city. Then you can start evaluating their reward tiers, their one-way awards options, etc etc.

[Photo: Mnts / Wiki Commons]

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