It took close to eight hours, searching for flights during the entirety of my biology lecture, trying to complete a bio problem set with the tinny on-hold music blaring from the speakerphone, and, well, missing the evening bio recitation.

Yeah, suffice it to say, yesterday wasn’t such a good day for the advancement of my biology studies, especially with next Thursday’s midterm (oops!) but, well, finally, we  locked up our international first class award to Tokyo and Thailand for Spring Break, using Aeroplan miles.

As about which I spoke in a previous post, I had only ever previously booked an award ticket with United miles, and despite the ignominy of Starnet blocking, had managed to lock up some pretty swell award tickets (Uzbekistan, Iraq, Macedonia, Berlin, Tokyo, China) on some pretty froufrou carriers (Singapore Airlines, Swiss, Lufthansa, US Airways – no, there, I jest).  I was not quite sure what to expect when booking an award with Air Canada. I thought, somewhat erroneously, that booking an award ticket with Air Canada, perhaps,  would prove to be an entirely easy experience that I would complete in under 30 minutes, with any flight available, on any date, on any route. A bit (okay, entirely) idealistic and quixotic, sure, but when you’re used to dealing with Starnet blocking and United’s agents, some of whom (Detroit call center, cough, cough) would be better served tending bar at some hole by the docks, you somehow think that the alternatives will present a much more pleasant experience.

Overall, though flights were not trammeled by Starnet blocking, I found the experience of chatting with my new friends at Air Canada quite similar to my chums at United. As I often experience when calling United, with Air Canada, there still existed a mix of agents,  some willing to work diligently to find a route and award availability, some hoping I would simply give up and hang up the phone, and some defensive or even offended if I had some idea of flight availability with two first class award seats, based on prior research. Moreover, a la United, there still existed agents who made up, or simply of which they had no idea, of award rules, melding their own concoctions of stipulations concerning stopover rules, legal connection times, and mileage requirements.

Still, though, I couldn’t wait to try to use Aeroplan miles, based on their wonderfully generous Asia first class award tickets for only 120,000 miles, two stopovers, and the ability to route to Asia via the Atlantic, the Pacific, or one in either direction, without a mileage premium or penalty. Sadly, Air Canada does not permit award ticket holds (as does United), or permit changes without a fee (United allows unlimited award changes up until the moment of departure for 1K Mileage Plus members – one of my absolute favorite – and necessary – perks). Most striking, however, was the fact that though I am a non-elite member of Aeroplan, and a 1K Mileage Plus member whose phone calls are routed to a non-overseas helpdesk with, uh, specially “trained” 1K agents, I found the overall erratic mix of demeanor, assiduousness, and effort the same with both airlines.

Here’s the day’s progression:

Call #1: I call Aeroplan for the first time yesterday morning, naked (not literally, of course), but without any sort of actual award flight availability information gleaned from the ANA award booking tool. I simply state to the indifferent sounding French guy on the other end of the line that I’d like to travel to Tokyo and Bangkok from JFK, using either one as a stopover or destination, based on how the routing evolved, via the Pacific one way, and the Atlantic on the return. Oh, and I’d like to make a stopover in San Francisco for two days on the outbound segment so my dear girlfriend, Elizabeth, could see San Francisco, Berkeley, and all of the other areas about which I spend too much time waxing in whiny nostalgia, and the award had to be in first class, for two people, and here were my exact dates.

Yeah, if I were that agent, I’d hate me, too.

I’m experienced enough to know that one cannot simply call with exact dates and routes and expect to wrap up an award in minutes, though, as I stated before, I expected the experience with Air Canada to be logarithmically easier than booking any award in United. I really and truly thought I could lock up my ideal award: New York to San Francisco, stopover, then, onto Tokyo and Bangkok via the Pacific, then back to New York via Europe.

Ignorance stopped me early.

So did award availability.

The agent couldn’t even route us out of New York on the desired date, the 12th of March. He reported he had two first class seats on a United Premium Service flight on the 13th, but with a short enough spring break, I did not want to shed a day to an already truncated period of time. I implored him to search any options via Houston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles – anything. He only had a US Airways flight, with a six hour layover in Philadelphia, that would put us into San Francisco late evening on the 12th, essentially already losing a day of the trip. Realizing I was beat on this round, I thanked him for his time, and hung up.

Post Call 1, and Biology Lecture:

I realized I had better prep myself better for the next call, which meant using the aforementioned ANA award availability tool to search all possible connections and prepare a list of available award routes, and then call Air Canada. In the dwindling minutes before Elizabeth and I needed to leave for class, I feverishly tapped out airport codes and various routes, hoping to find something with which I could work (Elizabeth, oddly, wasn’t interested in hearing about the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the various Star Alliance award booking tools – funny that) . It soon became apparent that, yeah, there were no first/biz class seats for two people to San Francisco on the 12th, on any Star Alliance carrier (and, believe me, I checked every possible route – Houston, Dulles, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Boston, Philly, Las Vegas, flights to Oakland, then, in a moment of desperation, using more creative routing attempts via Dallas, Kansas City, Portland, or Seattle), except an extremely questionable routing on US Airways via Phoenix that arrived quite late into SFO, already losing most of the day. Compounding the lack of JFK – SFO routes was the fact that nothing, and I mean nothing, existed in first class (or even in economy class, for that matter) across the Pacific in the next few days.

Sadly, I became resigned that I would have to abandon the San Francisco portion of the trip, and visit another time. I would have to route via Europe, it appeared, both ways. With a plethora of options across the Atlantic, I was sure I could find something via Europe. I head to class, armed with my laptop.

In class, I have half an ear available to the professor, with 90 percent of my attention on the ANA tool. I start to build a routing: JFK to Frankfurt (FRA) on Lufthansa. FRA – London (LHR) on Lufthansa. LHR – Bangkok (BKK) on Thai Airways, ultimately landing in Bangkok early morning on the 14th. Eventually, I run into the issue of, when hoping to depart BKK for Tokyo (NRT) three days later, despite, oh, 900 flights a day from BKK to NRT, none have any availability. Dismayed, I backtrack to the arrival on the 14th. I can find nothing from Europe to NRT directly, but somehow, find a redeye on Thai Airways from BKK – NRT on the night of the 14th, arriving NRT early morning on the 16th. Elizabeth and I can explore BKK for one day, then head onto Tokyo (taking full advantage of the famous Thai Airways ground festivities at BKK before the flight, of course). There existed availability a few days later, too, to return NRT – BKK, and spend a few days in BKK.

Class ended, and I returned to our apartment, surging with adrenaline (us airline nerds get really odd physiologically when booking award tickets, eh?), and ready to try again.

Call #2: I reach a nice women, who simply asks me to throw her the general details of my trip, and she’ll see what she can find. I try my hand, once more, at the San Francisco run, with heading onto BKK via the Pacific. After a 25 minute hold (an example of a diligent agent!), she tells me she can find nary a flight. She also informs me that stopovers on Aeroplan itineraries must fall within the same region (not true). Getting nowhere, I then try the classic tried-and-true angle, with all the flights I have previously researched. I say, with corn-syrup sweetness, that I had spoken with a previous agent, and that we had constructed a routing previous, but had gotten disconnected. Could, perchance, try to construct the same routing with her?

Of course, she says, but, instead of taking my previously-researched flight numbers and dates, she tries her schemata of taking the general details, and throwing a trip together. She comes back 25 minutes later, with some semblance of a trip, but, then, I somehow add my available flights. Unfortunately, she says, once I return to BKK after NRT, there is absolutely no way to get us home, via Europe or the Pacific (she, apparently, worked hard – I had been on the phone for an hour and sixteen minutes at this point). Using the ANA tool, I somehow find a flight on the 20th from BKK to Munich (MUC) with availability, that she had been unable to find (I made the mistake of telling her I had found said flight through the Lufthansa website, on which she brusquely told me that the flights had to display availability on the Air Canada website – oops!) Crestfallen, it seemed as if I was stymied, with no way to return. I frantically searched the ANA tool, trying to look at Thai Airways’ more obscure flights from BKK to Athens, even, at one point, finding an Egypt Air flight via Cairo, to Europe. We still, however, remain stuck in Munich. I find availability on a United Airlines 777 (I know, I know) to Chicago, and Dulles, but, she says no flights are available. Anything from Copenhagen? Nope. Vienna? Nope. Oslo? Nope. Stockholm? Nope. London? Nope. Warsaw? Nope. Madrid? Nope. I even look into US Airways flights to Boston, Philly, and Charlotte. She claims nothing is available, even in Economy, and laughs, dismissing the vagaries of award availability as the result of spring break. Then, and I have never had such an occurrence happen before, she says her shift has ended, and she will transfer me to a colleague who will help me complete the booking.

The phone seems to go dead, and then rings, and someone answers with “Aeroplan, this is so-and-so.” I explain the situation. She has absolutely no idea of my itinerary, or of the previous agent. Apparently, the previous agent preserved no semblance of my prior itinerary, and well, it has to be built again. Unfortunately, upon building the itinerary, this new agent begins to take issue with the fact that I transit BKK twice – once, in the less-than-24-hour connection (legal), and then again, for the actual stay in BKK, before the flight to MUC. She claims that because NRT is fewer miles, as measured from New York, than BKK, I must head to BKK first, and then onto NRT. I cannot make a stop, even for less than 24 hours, at a city I will transit later. I do not understand the logic at all, but frustrated now, at almost two hours on the phone, while trying to complete a biology problem set, where each problem is punctuated by hold music, then talking to the agent, I acquiesce to her request to try to route Elizabeth and me to NRT first, then to BKK. She can find barely anything – and, worse, cannot find any routing to return home via the Pacific, or Europe, claiming that the available BKK – MUC flight is invalid, because I cannot return to BKK after visiting NRT (Huh?) I tell her I have to run to a meeting, and hang up.

At this point, I am fully charged, frustrated, and anxious to have the award book. We’re very close at this point, but Elizabeth is going to kill me if I don’t settle down and finish our work on the damn bio problem set without interruptions.

Call #3: I try once more, and this time, receive a wonderful male agent with a lilting Irish brogue. An accent like that has to be good luck, I think. It rapidly becomes seamless – he raises no qualms with the legal connection in BKK, but runs into some issues routing us home from MUC. He asks if we can stay an extra day in MUC (why the hell not?), and then finds a flight to Dulles (IAD), and onto Newark (EWR), that will not violate the maximum-permitted-mileage. Would we like that? Hell, yes! After a wait to calculate taxes, some stories (I actually really enjoyed talking with this agent about life for awhile!), we had a reservation number, and an itinerary. Success. Whew.

I’m going to talk a bit tomorrow about how to actually book awards, and muse on whether one actually needs a paid award booking service, but for now, here is our award ticket. I am quite happy with the outcome, given the time and circumstances, but do not think it’s necessarily pristine. I’d like to try to change a few elements prior to departure (perhaps look for Swiss Air availability on the outbound, or return, shedding the United 777 MUC – IAD flight). If I find some sexy availability, I might pony of the 90 Canadian dollars (only 87 US Dollars!) to make the changes. I’m excited to try Lufthansa longhaul First class again (no one agrees, but I think their flat bed is one of the comfiest in the skies), and Thai longhaul first class, and their famous ground services (Thai Spa) in Bangkok. I think, overall, we did quite well, considering the constraints of two people traveling in first class, and the proximity of our departure dates. I’m very pleased.

Here’s the final routing:

JFK – FRA, Lufthansa first class, Boeing 747-400;

FRA – LHR, Lufthansa Euro biz class, Airbus A321;

LHR – BKK, Thai Airways first class, Boeing 747-400;

BKK – NRT, Thai Airways first class, Boeing 747-400;

NRT – BKK, All Nippon Airways biz class, Boeing 767-300;

BKK – MUC, Thai Airways first class, Boeing 747-400;

MUC – IAD, United Airlines first class (yecccch), Boeing 777-200

IAD – EWR, Continental Express steerage, Bombardier Q-200 (on the intriguing side, we have an hour and a half connection in Dulles, and our flight from Munich lands at 2pm, when only 400 other international arrivals pull into Dulles. I’d bet a lot of money we have absolutely no chance of making this connecting flight to Newark).

And, here’s the final visual representation. Just brilliant:

The final route, courtesy of the eminent Great Circle Mapper.

There will, of course, be a full trip report (yeah, yeah, I know).

Next step is to book hotels, and survive our organic chemistry and biology midterms next week. Then, we can possibly think about spring break.