US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - HELP! DM Award Changed AFTER ticketed without my consent!

I am Gold Preferred. Booked 2 business class seats to South Africa in April. Booked UA IAD-JFK, SQ JFK-FRA, LH FRA-JNB, with return LH CPT-JNB-FRA, SQ FRA-JFK, UA JFK-IAD.

I went to virtuallythere.com today to look up the reservation. To my dismay, the return flights were changed. I ticketed these MONTHS ago.

The return date was 4/25 (Mon) evening from CPT-JNB-FRA with a connection the following morning of arrival to JFK on SQ.

Now it shows that we were moved to a nonstop flight to FRA from CPT --- but it is a day earlier --- leaving 4/23 (Sun)... with no change to the FRA JFK portion - now giving me an entire day in FRA.... Apparently they no longer operate the CPT-JNB tag. Rather than booking me on SAA (*A soon) CPT-JNB and then keeping LH JNB-FRA, they booked me 24 hours earlier.

I called Gold res ... they said - sorry nothing they can do.... call LH (who of course said it is a US ticket so not LH's issue)
I called Gold DM Service Center ... they said they would waive the redeposit fee if I wanted my miles back....

HELP! I paid for a safari in South Africa and can't leave a day early....

I am just looking for them to get me on SAA (a future *A partner) from CPT to JNB and then restore the C class seats JNB-FRA on the flight that does operate. Now there are no seats on JNB-FRA for that day for award business.

Getting the royal runaround.

Not a happy 'goldmember' here....

Any thoughts ????

Can you ask them to move the dates BACK a day, rather than forward a day? Seems like a reasonable request.... and you'll still get a day in FRA. Think of it as a bonus vacation! :D

LH only flies from CPT 2x a week - therefore we would have to stay an entire week.... argh

Also - I DON'T want to stay in FRA. I want to have the 3 hour connection to use the lounge, shower, and get back to the US.

US Consumer Affairs says this is a pretravel issue and they can't help until AFTER the travel is all messed up.... (double) argh

Corporate Runaround 101....

ok initially i thought from your title that i wouldn't be sympathetic..i am though..I would ask for a supervisor and see if there is anything you can do , best they can do is maybe try to open up award availability.

Yeah, I'd say you're out of luck with SAA until they go *A and start accepting awards. Best best are to either drop the CPT-JHB segment and buy a ticket yourself for that leg or move the dates back.

-JC

I am stuck because there are no seats JNB FRA (even though I theoretically had them CPT JNB FRA) - once they cancelled my space out of CPT it gave the seats (presumably) to someone on the waitlist....

Now they are giving me a hard time with the connection FRA to JFK... Even though seats are available...

I am at the end of my rope with these folks....

I am being nice and patient because I know it isn't there fault but don't know what else I can possibly do....

What about going about the long way - CPT-SQ-SIN-SFO-IAD? Since you're on the highest tier award you can cross equal-cost regions.

-JC

What about going about the long way - CPT-SQ-SIN-SFO-IAD? Since you're on the highest tier award you can cross equal-cost regions.

-JC

I dunno how US does it, but UA would forbid it, since it would constitute a round-the-world award booking.

I am stuck because there are no seats JNB FRA (even though I theoretically had them CPT JNB FRA) - once they cancelled my space out of CPT it gave the seats (presumably) to someone on the waitlist....

Now they are giving me a hard time with the connection FRA to JFK... Even though seats are available...

I am at the end of my rope with these folks....

I am being nice and patient because I know it isn't there fault but don't know what else I can possibly do....

1. If LH has a flight JNB-FRA on the date you're looking for, speak to a res. SUPERVISOR (you will get absolutely NOWHERE with front-line res./DM reps., period), explain the situation, and ask her to contact LH - there are procedures in place where a Star partner can request another to open up FF space for reprotections such as these.

2. You might have to accept flying on LH or UA FRA-IAD - the agent who booked your itinerary in the beginning was supposed to book you on the *most direct routing* - can't fault US for insisting upon this now.

I have First Class award tickets to South Africa too. I'm going on LH from IAD to FRA on April the 2nd and then 10 hours later on LH from FRA to CPT with a stop over in JNB. The outbound flight is fine but; they decided to change the flight back from CPT to FRA from the 20th to the 21st. This was fine as I have the time but they forgot to change the flight from FRA to IAD. They still had it leaving on the 20th, which I obviously couldn't make. Luckily I look at checkmytrip.com every so often and saw this had happened.

I called the awards line, and as anyone who has tried of late to book award travel on another *A airline with US air points, it takes forever to actually get to a person and most of the time they don't have any inventory anyway. I feel very fortunate that there was award travel left on the 21st in first going back to IAD on United. It did take about an hour to get it fixed.

Another thing that made setting this trip up interesting is that my travel companion was using United points for the exact same flights. Try coordinating that.

By the way, he called United and talked to a real person and had his new seat on the FRA to IAD flight in maybe 5 minutes. I was on hold for at least 30 minutes with USairway before I could even talk to a person. It then took two supervisors to fix the problem. I then had to go to DCA and get the paper tickets reissued. Service with a snarl by the way.

The reason for this is that LH changed their schedule from going CPT-JNB-FRA (744) to separate flights CPT-FRA (340) and JNB-FRA (744). So in theory this should provide more seats to/from RSA.

As far as SAA, you're out of luck until they formally join *A.

I admit to not paying real close attention to what your exact problem is ( I have to admit reading all those airline codes scrambled my brain a bit); however, we had an issue where the flights were changed on a domestic FF ticket resulting in a 4 hour layover in Denver (instead of the original 1 hr.). These were USAir FF awards on a United Flight. US Air would not take 1 second to try to think of a solution - they told me that there were no FF seats available on a different flight, so tough luck.

I called United, who was very accommodating. We worked out this deal: United changed the Code so our seats were not indicated as FF award seats; I guess they indicated they were coach seats or something like that. That allowed US Air to then go and change our flights to a different flight. It took several phone calls back and forth to work this out, but thankfully we did. Four hours in Denver with two young boys would NOT have been fun.

Perhaps LH can do something similar - change your seat codes so then US Air could change you to flights that had any available seats?

I hope this makes sense - I apologize in advance if I missed the gist of your problem.

I admit to not paying real close attention to what your exact problem is ( I have to admit reading all those airline codes scrambled my brain a bit); however, we had an issue where the flights were changed on a domestic FF ticket resulting in a 4 hour layover in Denver (instead of the original 1 hr.). These were USAir FF awards on a United Flight. US Air would not take 1 second to try to think of a solution - they told me that there were no FF seats available on a different flight, so tough luck.

I called United, who was very accommodating. We worked out this deal: United changed the Code so our seats were not indicated as FF award seats; I guess they indicated they were coach seats or something like that. That allowed US Air to then go and change our flights to a different flight. It took several phone calls back and forth to work this out, but thankfully we did. Four hours in Denver with two young boys would NOT have been fun.

Perhaps LH can do something similar - change your seat codes so then US Air could change you to flights that had any available seats?

I hope this makes sense - I apologize in advance if I missed the gist of your problem.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that LH would go for this - all changes to an award booking are supposed to be made ONLY through the ticketing carrier - the United folks actually broke the rules for you in your case, as all contact should have taken place via US. That said, US has ways to request that LH (or any other Star airline) release the necessary inventory - it just involves speaking to a US supe and going from there.

US won't call LH. They will only 'redeposit my miles' and let me cancel my trip.

ARGH.

They say LH won't help. They say US isn't responsible for an LH schedule change.

I think a letter to Mr. Lakefield is the next step....

US won't call LH. They will only 'redeposit my miles' and let me cancel my trip.

ARGH.

They say LH won't help. They say US isn't responsible for an LH schedule change.

I think a letter to Mr. Lakefield is the next step....

I think it's worth a try to contact LH yourself. At the least, it couldn't hurt.

When I called United, the first thing they told me was that the computer just automatically reassigned our seats, and that a 4 hour layover really was unreasonable (especially given the fact that other flights existed with less of a layover).

Hopefully you'll get lucky like I did.

I know a lot of you are really big USAir fans, but I truly have found the service at United to be much better. Granted, I've only flown United a few times in the past years, but their employees seem to have a better attitude toward customer service, and a more positive attitude overall. Just my experience - your mileage may vary!

Before you write, think what you ask for. SAA isn't a partner yet, so I don't think asking to be put on them will get you anywhere.

As another poster said, I would press for a seat to be released on JNB-FRA, and pay for a CPT-JNB flight.

US can't be held responsible for LH's schedule change, but this seems fair to me.