Good morning from rainy San Francisco.  I hope you all had a great (sunny) weekend.  Since I was stuck inside most of the weekend, I did some travel planning (I do that anyway even if the weather is great).  I booked a quick weekend trip to Portland in mid May and I even found Alaska Airlines saver award space for the return flight from PDX to SFO at a convenient time (not 6 or 7am).  After calling British Airways several times and finally getting through after hearing the busy dial tone 5+ times, I booked the return flight using British Airways Avios.  It was not the greatest redemption ever, but I had British Airways Avios to burn.

For the outbound flight from SFO to PDX, I searched on Google Flights and found a few decent flight times and prices.  Since I am traveling with my roommate, I needed to get 2 tickets.  I have access to a few Alaska Airlines $99 companion ticket codes (the codes are transferrable and can be booked by anyone).  Here is the standard price for 2 one way tickets:

And here is the price with the $99 Alaska Airlines companion ticket.  As you can see, the price with the companion ticket is 43 cents higher than booking the flights without the companion ticket.  I decided to save the companion ticket for a future flight and researched other flight options.

After logging into my Citi Thank You Points account, I searched for the same flight as above.  I found out that American Airlines is a codeshare partner for that Alaska Airlines flight.  The paid price for each ticket would be $120.10, but the number of Citi Thank You Points differs depending on which airline you book.  This only occurs because I am a Citi Prestige Credit Card holder.  If you do not have that credit card, the price in terms of Citi Thank You Points will be the same (Travel Codex wrote about this in July 2015).  If I book the Alaska Airlines flight, the price is 9,030 Citi Thank You Points, but if I book the American Airlines codeshare flight, the price is only 7,506 Citi Thank You Points.  That is a savings of 1,524 x 2 tickets = 3,048 Citi Thank You Points (retail savings of $48.77 since I have the Citi Prestige Credit Card).

After going through the entire booking process, I realized that I had misspelled my roommate’s first name by 1 letter.  It was very embarrassing, so I decided to call Alaska Airlines and see if they could fix the typo.  They told me that since the flight was booked as an American Airlines codeshare flight, that I would need to call American Airlines.

After calling American Airlines, I was told that since the ticket was booked through an online travel agency (Connexions Loyalty Travel Solutions via Citi Thank You Points), that I would need to call them for assistance.

After calling Connexions Loyalty Travel Solutions, I was told that it would not be possible to fix the typo, but since I was calling within 24 hours, they cancelled the entire reservation and deposited all the Citi Thank You Points back into my account.  The process was instant and I went through the entire booking process to rebook the flight.  Luckily, the price was the same and the number of Citi Thank You Points was the same.  I was much more careful this time around typing her name.

After rebooking, I called Alaska Airlines to find the Alaska Airlines reservation number.  That process was simple since the agent can type your last name, flight number, and date of travel into their system to pull up the reservation number.  As she was telling me the reservation number, I added that reservation to my Alaska Airlines account.  I thanked her for her help and hung up.  I then added my Alaska Airlines frequent flyer number, TSA PreCheck number, and picked our seats.  I wish I was still Alaska Airlines MVP Gold 75K (status matched to that last year but never flew on Alaska Airlines).

Lessons learned:

• If you get a busy signal calling British Airways to book an Avios award ticket, wait 5-10 minutes and call back.
• If you are planning on booking a flight with Citi Thank You Points, see if there is an American Airlines codeshare flight available.
• Double check that you spelled everyone’s name correctly during the booking process.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.  Have a great day everyone!

P.S. Are there any miles and points collectors in Portland who would be interested in a Saturday or Sunday meetup on either May 21 or 22?  Please let me know.