CHI-ELP Question

[ray828]

Hello,

I'm trying to travel between Chicago and El Paso on a two zone reward. My goal is to go west on the Builder, south on the Starlight and finally east on the Limited to get there. I know that Amtrak used to guarantee a same-day connection from the Builder to the Starlight in Portland last year. I don't see this routing option on Amtrak.com anymore though. What's the case now with connecting in Portland? Any information would be helpful.

Thanks,

Ray

 

[BrianPR3]

i tried booking it only lets me book 2 options 421 or 21/1 with what your trying i tried booking it as multi city trip and tried spreading out the dates but it kept kicking me out because of a train leaves before you arrive issue.

 

[William W.]

I would give Amtrak Guest Rewards a call. The EB, as you probably know, has been very tricky as of late, and connections with many other trains are no longer guaranteed.

As for being able to go from CHI-ELP via PDX, if it doesn't come up as a valid itinerary when booking normally (NOT using multi-city), you can't use points to book it as a two-zone. You'd have to construct your itinerary using multi city, and and do two one-zone redemptions.

Per Amtrak's redemption guidelines:

"A travel itinerary for a single redemption must follow a published route between the initial origin and final destination. A published route is an itinerary automatically generated by Amtrak's reservation system."

 

[tomfuller]

This morning I checked several dates and it showed a valid connection in Portland with the EB coming in at 11:40AM and a 2+ hour time in Portland before the CS leaves for California.

 

[William W.]

Right, CHI-LAX via PDX is a valid, published itinerary. However, CHI-ELP via PDX is not. If the desired route is not published, a single redemption cannot be used. Multiple separate redemptions must be made to construct the desired route. If you were to do that, the connections would most likely be guaranteed, but again, you could not do it as a single, two-zone redemption.

 

[William W.]

To summarize:

The connection to the CS from the EB at PDX should be guaranteed, since it comes up when searching for itineraries through the normal booking system (again, I would call to confirm this).

The route that you wish to take is not a published route, so you would not be able to go from CHI-ELP via PDX with a single, two-zone redemption. You would have to do two separate one-zone redemptions.

 

[the_traveler]

If you have to do 2 redemptions, go CHI to WPT as 1 and WPT to ELP as the other. This way, the connection at PDX would be guaranteed!