Hello all. I'm trying to use a 25K DM award for a UA flight for JFK-LAX-JFK. On the return, I want to take UA #30, but US doesn't have the flight available in its system. However, UA Mileage Plus does have the seat available for a free flight. Is there any way to ask UA to release the seat to US? Thanks.

Hello all. I'm trying to use a 25K DM award for a UA flight for JFK-LAX-JFK. On the return, I want to take UA #30, but US doesn't have the flight available in its system. However, UA Mileage Plus does have the seat available for a free flight. Is there any way to ask UA to release the seat to US? Thanks.

There has been EXTREMELY LIMITED success doing this. I'd say with no status on US your chances are essentially zero, as this requires the 1K desk to pull strings.

Have you considered a connection in SFO? You'd still get p.s. and there might be more availabiltiy.

As you probably know, availability tends to open up as the date gets closer, so you may just want to book what you can get, and subsequently call every so often to see if UA #30 opened up.

Thanks for the response!

I had the same thing happen- looking for a seat on a UA flight, and it's available for UA miles but not for US ones since all of the slots allocated as available for US miles were already taken- so much for a partnership!

I had the same thing happen- looking for a seat on a UA flight, and it's available for UA miles but not for US ones since all of the slots allocated as available for US miles were already taken- so much for a partnership!

An airline can't give its own elites priority for award seats? I kinda like that idea actually.

Also, this is a *A-wide practice and not just unique to UA-US. Granted rumor has it that some *A members leave the number of seats available to DM redeemers extra restricted, but this general practice is well accepted.