questions about city pairs on zed ticket

I am traveling from LAX/AMS/LAX toward the end of the month and I just have a couple of questions regarding how I should issue my zed ticket. I'll be flying with KLM and gonna issue direct city pair.. lax/ams and ams/lax.

Now if the loads gets dangerous when on the day of my travel, and where as if per say I travel as lax/msp(atl,iad,sfo...ect)/ams would be a sure thing. What would the airport agents do? A simliar situation happened to my coworker when she tried to fly from lax to lhr through hou and lax/hou was complete sold out. the airport agent ended up rerouting her to new york and she was finally able to get to lhr from there. I wonder if KLM agents would do the same for me if that happens.

I will probably issue a couple of backup routes just in case but it would be nice if I dont even have to resort to issuing additional back up tickets...

Any tips or suggestions would be very appreciated.


Jeff

I've had luck multiple times getting agents to honor a ZED in reverse or for a different city in the same (or lower) fare zone, but I've not happened upon an instance trying to use one issued for a direct flight for an alternate itinerary that includes a layover. It's a pain to tie up $$ with ZEDs, but I would be inclined to at least get one ZED itinerary that included a layover (say a LAX/ATL ZED plus ATL/AMS) and then if that wasn't the most open connecting city, you could try and get the agent to honor it for a different one.

The one potential issue I see there is (using my sample ZED itinerary) say you bought LAX-ATL-AMS but now SFO looks a lot better load wise. While the LAX/ATL leg would definitely be less than a LAX/SFO and should therefore work no problem, you might hit a snag with getting ATL/AMS to count for SFO/AMS. The solution might be to buy the most pricey of each leg--LAX to connecting city, then connecting city to AMS--to have on hand. I don't think I've ever tried to get the difference back when the fare zone for the flight I took was less than the fare zone of the ZED I paid for, so I'm not sure whether you can do that or if you'll just have to be willing to take somewhat of a loss. (Mine was always a nominal amount and I didn't feel like trying to hassle with it.)

You can always use a pricier zed on a lesser flight, but never the opposite. I also have not tried using a nonstop on something with connections, simply because I don't think it can be done. They have to have something to uplift at the connecting city, and since you only have one coupon, it's gone...used on the first leg.

Bite the bullet and buy some alternate ZED's to be safe.

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Originally Posted by Tony757

Bite the bullet and buy some alternate ZED's to be safe.

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Buying back-ups is always your best option if your traveling on paper tickets. If you're airline subscribes to myidtravel as does the airline(s) on which you intend to travel, you can buy your tickets as you go, depending on which routing serves you best.

It is becoming less and less likely, though, that an agent will accept a coupon issued XXX-YYY for XXX-ZZZ or vice versa. I would say too that agents are instructed (correctly) not to accept a coupon issued for XXX-ZZZ on an itinerary containing connections or stopping diretly flights (e.g., XXX-YYY-ZZZ). Should you be offloaded at YYY, the agent will have no coupon to lift. You'll be stuck in YYY trying to figure out how to get a YYY-ZZZ ticket issued by your airline, or the poor agent will spend hours trying to help you.

thanks guys. I've decided to issue lax-lhr-ams and back as my back up. So far lax-ams-lax still on KLM still look good. Lets hope that they stay that way....