Making intersecting air reservations for two people on two continents
 

I will be traveling to Spain this summer and returning to the US with my Spanish friend's 13 year old daughter who will be our guest here for ten days before returning home. I usually plan and reserve my flights on orbitz. Is it possible to do this in a way in which we can simultaneously be booked on the same Spain to US leg of the journey? Do you recommend we use a real live travel agent for something this complex? Any advice would be much appreciated!

This is not complex. You can still use Orbitz (advisability of that is for another thread) and simply coordinate the bookings and seat selection. Do that by booking (or better, holding if able) one person's travel and try to be on a flight which is not full. Communicate the info, book the other on the same flights, then come back and finalize the first. Then do the same for seats.

You could, in theory, do as NoFlyZone suggests. However, I'd suggest that you make the reservations yourself directly through the airline that you'll be using. That will make things enormously easier if any issues arise between now and the summer -- for example, seating, schedule changes, etc. If you make the reservations directly with an airline, you will be able to link the reservations; if you make the reservations with Orbitz, that will be more difficult (or impossible).

Thanks so much. Already figured out the best airline to use and the advisability of doing it all via phone through them. As you suggested.

I did something similar with my nephew last year. I was picking him up and dropping him off so what I did was book two tickets:

A PIT-FRA round trip nestled inside a FRA-PIT round trip. The "inner" PIT-FRA round trip ticket represented the flights with my nephew and the "outer" FRA-PIT round trip ticket represented my trip to and from PIT to get him and go back home.

I also looked at a single multi-city destination ticket of FRA-PIT-FRA-PIT-FRA but the two individual tickets came out cheaper.

I hope that was clear.

Kinda related, make sure you have the proper documentation that shows that your friends allow you to take their daughter out of Spain.

You beat me to the conclusion. My thought was pick up the phone, call the airline, explain your situation.