kyunbit

Trying to get award seats on Air China. United shows availability of 6 seats, Aegean can't see any. Is this possible? Or should keep on calling to get different Aegean agents?

witlesspax

Are you looking at "saver" or "standard" award space on United? Only "saver" awards are applicable to other FFPs.

kyunbit

Saver award space in Y on Air China. 6 seats available via United, Aegean air phone reps insist there are no seats.

Jma12

Yes, this is very possible. I had the same problem with a SQ flight last time. You will need to tell the agent that you can see on united that there are 6 seats available. They will call you the next day to confirm the seat.

ericw

not surprising...there might be some sort of "star block" for the small regional airline. But the most likely reason is that A3 itself has some sort of bad IT implementation or filter. For example, I generally cannot find any availability on any star alliance flights operated regional affiliates, eg. AC Rough, AC Express, UA Express by Skywest etc. The agents always insisted that those are not "star alliance" airlines....sigh...

Jma12

Last time when I asked for a specific SQ flight that I saw on Aeroplan, I gave them the date and flight number. She told me that the flight is not bookable, and at that point I have a feeling that A3 is being "star block".

irishguy28

Yes, of course it is possible.

United and Aegean are two very different airlines with two very different frequent flyer programmes.

You wouldn't go to Costco to find out whether Best Buy stocks/sells a particular Chinese product, would you?

NWIFlyer

In theory, everyone see the same base inventory through Starnet, where all redemption seats are loaded. Airlines can choose to block some of this inventory to their own members - UA used to do so. This is known as Starnet blocking (inventive, heh?). A3 is not known to indulge in this behaviour.

However, airlines will also do deals with each other to make extra inventory available between themselves - the most notable example in recent times being SQ & LH Group.

Because A3 has a fairly limited network, and small FFP, it really doesn't have much of a bargaining chip to offer any other partners in respect of redemption seat 'exchange'. UA, on the other hand, is absolutely enormous - by some distance the biggest airline in the Alliance - and so is far more likely to have inventory available above and beyond the base level in Starnet.

What you see in Aeroplan, on UA.bomb and ANA is an indication, not a guarantee. If you see availability in all three, you've probably got a better chance. As another relatively small player in Alliance terms, ANA is the least likely to have extra deals, and therefore you might expect their search results to be the most accurate, but - as always - YMMV.

kyunbit

I went ahead and ticketed with United. It seems now United has problems issuing the ticket. Have to call back.

KLouis

Seems to me that either United was high on LSD seeing non existent seats, or it was daydreaming!

Jma12

All *A should able to see each other's saver's award for redemption.

The Costco and Best Buy comparison is not valid because both companies do not belong in the same "alliance", they do not sell a share product from the same stock, and the product they sell are tangible goods.

irishguy28

That's only a "should".

Same alliance or no, they have *different* frequent flyer programmes with *different* currencies and *different* rules and, very often, *different* availabilities.

I still like my Costco/Bestbuy analogy. Just because United will sell you a ticket doesn't mean that Aegean (and Austrian, Air New Zealand, ANA, TAP, Lufthansa, SAS, SWISS, EVA Air, etc etc etc) *MUST* sell you the same ticket. If you want to buy something from a particular store or particular airline, then there is no point wasting your time looking up that product/flight/service/tangible good on anyone else's website. It's irrelevant.

And anyway, it looks like United was telling porkies.