Can We Leave Yet?

After weeks of studying availability of Star Alliance Awards, I had put a solid itinerary together: SAN-LAX-FRA-HKG-AKL-HKG-ICN-SFO-SAN. The plan was to fly to Hong Kong in style, stay free at the awesome Grand Hyatt using award nights, spend 5 or 6 days showing the family my old haunting ground, and then continue on to New Zealand. We had planned on purchasing a Star Alliance South Pacific Airpass to cruise around the Cook Islands, Papeete, Fiji, and possibly New Caledonia. When I finally got the whole itinerary on hold, the departure date was January 29.

Unfortunately, Alexander caught a cold the preceding week. By Friday he was coughing violently. By the weekend, he was having fevers.

This was very bad from a planning perspective. I had nights booked in Hong Kong. I had very scarce business class award seats on hold - 3 together on every flight, which is unheard of. So trying to push back the itinerary became a very time-consuming and annoying process.I basically had to use the rudimentary tools available to attempt to keep track of award availability on about 10 different airlines.

On the 28th, by a stroke of luck, United released a boatload of business class award seats between Sydney and the USA. I was able to cut out a pretty daunting return itinerary (AKL-HKG-ICN-SFO - over 3 days) and replace it with SYD-LAX. I immediately called USAir and had them make the change. Plus we were able to push back our departure day to January 30. We would all be healthy by then! And since I knew how fortunate I was to have that UA LAX-SYD inventory open up, I made a backup reservation for us, leaving on Jan 31... just in case!

Saturday was a glorious day. We walked by the Beach in Del Mar, had lunch, and APL played in a park by the beach. I was so relieved to have our flights settled, and to be able to finally relax.

Unfortunately, that relaxation did not last. The USAir rep had made a mistake. She had left my AKL-HKG leg in the itinerary and had just added SYD-LAX. We were scheduled to fly from  New Zealand to Hong Kong and then leave from Sydney to go back to Los Angeles. I did some research into how I would fix the reservation. I then checked my reservation again - the SYD-LAX leg had disappeared. This was not good. 

I checked availability of flights and called USAir (reservations cannot be done online). The representative looked at my itinerary and said, "I don't think you can do this." I did not get a good vibe from him at all. The unspoken booking rule with USAir is if you don't get a helpful rep, HUACA (hang up and call again). I told the rep I had to go do some research and would call back to get it fixed. He said, "No problem", and we left it at that.

I called back a minute later and found an awesome rep. Cathy immediately understood the issue and went to work to get it fixed. Unfortunately, as Cathy was working diligently to fix my itinerary, Rep #1 decided to cancel my itinerary. Cathy did everything she could. But in the end, the itinerary was canceled into oblivion. And a couple of the segments did not go back into inventory. Cathy was incredibly apologetic (as was her supervisor). But there was nothing they could do. The seats were gone.

Those HKG-AKL seats never reappeared. I will spare you the gory details but those itineraries come with limited hold periods. And APL has stayed sick. As each day passes, I have been making new reservations. I push the departure back some more. At one point, I had us booked us to go to Hawaii for a few days to recuperate and to use our Hyatt nights. But APL was even too sick for that.

It's getting very tough again - as that surprise UAL inventory is gobbled up. I'm not sure when we're leaving. I think we're going to New Zealand. I will know for sure once APL is healthy and I am able to ticket something. 

Here's what itinerary fatigue looks like: