United MileagePlus (Consolidated) - Help booking UA/Air China itinerary

I'm trying to book an intinerary with both UA and Air China flights - UA to PVG, Air China to KWL.

Found the itinerary I wanted on ITA. I called the elite line yesterday and the agent made a reservation. She said that it could take up to 24 hours for Air China to get back with a confirmation. Once that happened, I could go ahead and purchase the itinerary.

A few hours later, a message showed up on my UA reservation with a confirmation number for Air China. Unfortunately, I can't find anyway to look at that confirmation number on the Air China site.

I called today because my reservation expires tonight. I just wanted to be sure everything is OK. This agent says if it's been over 12 hours, it means Air China has no seats. She recommended I cancel the UA flight, reprice and book UA just to PVG, then try to find alternate transportation from PVG to KWL. She also said that the first agent should never have booked it this way.

So....I went to the Air China site and found the flights I wanted, seats available in Y (which is what I want).

My original itinerary has long layovers in PVG, but I still don't want to risk booking as two separate tickets, because if there are any problems on the UA flights, that will leave me completely unprotected.

Air China's call center is now closed, unfortunately, and my reservation expires at midnight.

Any suggestions?

I'm trying to book an intinerary with both UA and Air China flights - UA to PVG, Air China to KWL.

Found the itinerary I wanted on ITA. I called the elite line yesterday and the agent made a reservation. She said that it could take up to 24 hours for Air China to get back with a confirmation. Once that happened, I could go ahead and purchase the itinerary.

If Air China has seats in the fare buckets you're trying to ticket it on, you should push this harder. Otherwise, just go to Expedia and friends and ticket it there. Booking two separate reservations is a recipe for disaster.


A few hours later, a message showed up on my UA reservation with a confirmation number for Air China. Unfortunately, I can't find anyway to look at that confirmation number on the Air China site.

You'll have an Air China confirmation number once your reservation is ticketed. Remember: Ticket numbers are far more important than reservation numbers/confirmation codes.

If Air China has seats in the fare buckets you're trying to ticket it on, you should push this harder. Otherwise, just go to Expedia and friends and ticket it there. Booking two separate reservations is a recipe for disaster.



You'll have an Air China confirmation number once your reservation is ticketed. Remember: Ticket numbers are far more important than reservation numbers/confirmation codes.

Thanks for the reply. I just got off the phone with UA. Better agent (I think, I hope) who says the problem is there aren't any combinable fares with Air China. I have another booking (with two day layovers in PVG each way), but I still have to wait until Air China customer service US call centers open to find out if I've actually gotten their end of it ticketed.

I'm guessing I'd get the same confirmation delays on Expedia? UA says it usually takes up to 12 hours. I'm reluctant to use a 3rd party site in case anything goes wrong - I don't want to be out of the country, encounter a problem and have either airline try to push me to Expedia for resolution.

I'm really limited in flight choices because I'm in Y and I don't want a UA 747 (overhead TV monitors) for such a long flight.

I'm really limited in flight choices because I'm in Y and I don't want a UA 747 (overhead TV monitors) for such a long flight.

If you're keen to avoid the 747, pick a route that UA flies a 777 on to say, Japan and route to China from there.

Thanks for the reply. I just got off the phone with UA. Better agent (I think, I hope) who says the problem is there aren't any combinable fares with Air China. I have another booking (with two day layovers in PVG each way), but I still have to wait until Air China customer service US call centers open to find out if I've actually gotten their end of it ticketed.


Too bad. Chinese airlines use their own ticketing system that doesn't interface well with Western systems. It's still usually the case that they often offer only Y fares to international booking channels for their domestic flights.


I'm guessing I'd get the same confirmation delays on Expedia? UA says it usually takes up to 12 hours. I'm reluctant to use a 3rd party site in case anything goes wrong - I don't want to be out of the country, encounter a problem and have either airline try to push me to Expedia for resolution.

I'm really limited in flight choices because I'm in Y and I don't want a UA 747 (overhead TV monitors) for such a long flight.

I wouldn't stress about it too much, if you are solo traveling without a lot of luggage. Walk up fares in China aren't too outrageous, and, as a backup to the Air China flights from PVG, you can transfer from PVG to SHA airport, and there are a lot of domestic flights from Shanghai to Guilin every day, particularly on China Southern. Book a cheap flight on www.elong.com (Chinese travel portal), and if worst comes to worst, you have to eat a $300 walkup fare, but I doubt it will come to that.

If it's more complicated (+children or +luggage), then you may want to book with Air China directly. I think they add a code-share on most UA Pacific flights, so it should be possible to book a through flight with them.

Too bad. Chinese airlines use their own ticketing system that doesn't interface well with Western systems. It's still usually the case that they often offer only Y fares to international booking channels for their domestic flights.



I wouldn't stress about it too much, if you are solo traveling without a lot of luggage. Walk up fares in China aren't too outrageous, and, as a backup to the Air China flights from PVG, you can transfer from PVG to SHA airport, and there are a lot of domestic flights from Shanghai to Guilin every day, particularly on China Southern. Book a cheap flight on www.elong.com (Chinese travel portal), and if worst comes to worst, you have to eat a $300 walkup fare, but I doubt it will come to that.

If it's more complicated (+children or +luggage), then you may want to book with Air China directly. I think they add a code-share on most UA Pacific flights, so it should be possible to book a through flight with them.

I thought I'd post an update here.

I'm going to book two separate tickets. Air China uses booking class 'Y'. United low economy SEA-PVG uses G/L. An Air China confirmation number gets generated, but the flights never get confirmed and the reservation expires. After 4 phone calls, three rebookings and hours on the phone, I finally called Air China to understand what happens. They receive a request for a 'G' that goes on the wait list because there is no such class on Air China, and eventually the UA reservation expires. The Air China class should be a Y, but to actually book this through UA, all UA legs have to be booked as a Y fare (top $ economy).

Surprised that it took 4 agents and a supervisor couldn't figure out the problem. After I explained what Air China told me (they did not call Air China themselves), they explained about the book-it-all in Y requirement and sent me off to web services. Web services said the same thing, there's no way around it.

What really irritated me is that you can call up the itinerary and appear to book it on the website, even though UA knows it's an IT problem and that the reservation they build will never work. I suppose, since the 'solution' is to just buy up to a 'Y' fare, they consider it fixed. It will only impact lower economy fare travellers like me.

What really shocked me was that two different agents suggested I book two separate tickets. One suggested booking the internal China flights separately. The other talked to her supervisor and they suggested a ticket SEA-LAX and a second ticket LAX-PVG-KWL-PVG-SEA to reduce the cost (slightly) of a ticket forced into Y. When I pointed out to the first agent that I would be unprotected and stranded if there was a misconnect between tickets, she acknowledged that it was true, but if I hadn't known of the risk, I might have taken her very bad advice. When I mentioned the same concern to the supervisor, she denied it and said that if there was a misconnect, UA would see two tickets and would work with me to find a resolution. She didn't mention that the resolution would probably be to buy the first available round trip ticket at walkup prices.

Very unsettling experience.

I have a lot of Asia travel coming up next year. This experience has made me decide to re-qualify for Gold and forget about Plat. I'm going to shift my travel to ST for the rest of the year. I'll revisit the issue later next year and see how things are going. Maybe it's time to sit it out with another alliance for a year or two.