Since I've read it can take a while to book over the phone, are there any tips to make the booking process more efficient? Should you give an overview of your itinerary first or just start quoting each segment one by one? Do you need to specify which is your stopover and destination city? Do you quote flight numbers or origin/destination pairs? City names or airport codes?
Contrary to the reports of some other posters I have had no problems getting the USair agents to book the itineraries I want.
The way my calls go is like this (I have done this twice in the last few days so my recollection should be good):
- they say hello and I tell them I want to make star alliance flight award bookings for myself and xx others (I usually book in lots of two because generally you can't get more than two seats at a time)
each using our own DM points balance - the latter is important if you want to do it that way so they set it up correctly from the outset
- they will then ask you what the DM account numbers are for the people flying, at this point they will be able to ID you on the computer
- they then ask you where you want to go and when
- say something like A to B (final destination) leaving on xx June and returning on yy July
- then before they go off and investigate by themselves tell them that you have searched for flight availability online and have a suggested itinerary
- so far in my experience (and I've done this at least 6 times) agents always are willing to check the itinerary you suggest
- tell them for each flight in your itinerary - departure date, flight number (with airline prefix), departure time and class of travel
- they will then check each flight in their computer and hopefully their computer will show the same availability as you
- do this for each flight until you have done your full itinerary
- they will then ask you if you want to ticket the itinerary, I always do but there is the option to have it put on hold
- if you say yes they will then go away for a little while and then come back with the points and dollar cost of each ticket
- at this point they will usually read the itinerary back to you, make sure you check it carefully against yours because mistakes do happen
particularly be very careful about flights leaving near midnight that they have got the correct day
- make sure that they have the name of the traveller correct, including middle name, be especially careful if there is anything unusual or tricky about the name's spelling
- you then give them your CC details and pay on the spot for that ticket
- they will then read out the US air 6 digit PNR for that traveller, at this point ask them for the PNRs for any other airlines you are using because each airline will have its own PNR for the flights it is carrying you on, the agent will have this information and
it is most important to get it and get it accurately (read back for confirmation) so that you can check your flights on those other airlines websites, from then on you should only have to deal with the carrier airlines.
- you then repeat the ticketing, double checking and paying process for each extra ticket reminding them that the points should come from the traveller's own DM account (if that is how you are doing it)
At the end of the day folks are getting premium flights for the same price (or even less sometimes) than equivalent economy flights.
