TonyBurr

I followed the advice on here and looked to see if the LH flight in F was available on aeroplan. It was. I spoke to 6 UA agents today and none could see it as available. I understand that Aeroplan is availabity on AC not UA, but the theory to check aeroplan does not hold true.

exbayern

Tony, can you perhaps PM UA Insider with the specific details? I directed both Carlos and Shannon to this thread as well as the other one but as I waited 3 months for a reply from them, I have no specific flights to show them at this time.

snic

This time with Turkish Airlines. TK changed their schedule, and the perfect flight pops up. It shows as available for business class award booking on ua.com. I call to change my ticket, and the agent can't even see the flight for revenue bookings, much less the award seat. At this point the ANA tool still shows the old flight schedule and no award availability.

Over the next 18 hours, I keep checking, calling UA, and getting the same response. Finally the ANA site shows the new schedule, and the award seat is there! Excited, I call UA... and they still can't even see the flight.

By this time it's past midnight, so I go to bed. By 7:00 the next morning, the award seat is gone from both UA's and ANA's websites. I'm guessing that someone else grabbed it through a different *A partner (e.g., ANA) with a more up-to-date booking database

Thanks again, UA.


The Aeroplan website often shows the same phantom/ghost availability as united.com. The ANA tool tends to be more reliable than either, at least for LH F award inventory.

chinatraderjmr

Who told you to look on Aeroplan. Rule # 1if you are looking for LH availability, DON'Twaste your time looking at the UA, Aerolplan or ant of these new sites popping up. There is only one way and one way ONLY to find true LH availability; USE THE ANA SITE!!!. If you rely on UA or Aeroplan you will just waste your time and the agents time. I'm surprised with all these posts, people still use UA or AC and are surprised/angry when the flight they want is not avail.

I was supposed to leave JFK tonight to FRA w a connection to Asia tomorrow. I woke up yesterday morning and realized that I had nothing to do keeping me in NY. I went on ANA yesterday morning looking for an avail flight to MUC in F with a conx to FRA (did not want a nonstop as I needed to arrive after 2:00 in FRA today so I could spend the night and not have it count as a stop. Found the perfect flight EWR-MUC for last night on the ANA site and called UA. I already knew it was avail and it took the agent 5 minutes to make the change and reissue the ticket. So here I am in FRA tonight with an extra 22 hour stop. Had I not found the flights using ANA, I would be still be in NY, getting ready to leave for the airport

Very common for UA agents these days to not see partner flights (even revenue). Same thing happened when I wanted to book FRA - YYZ on LH and agent kept telling me the flight does not exist. You have to tell the agent to put in the airline you want, not just check all availability. Even then you may have to tell the agent to scroll down. Of course my LH flight to YYZ was there but I had to "teach" the agent how to find it

mgm321

I would call LH and make sure the E-ticket they have is in F on that segment, not just the reservation. A one minute ticket reissue with a partner sounds too good to be true in Shares.

chinatraderjmr

Then it was not phantom availability any longer. You were lucky and called after the availability became real and before anyone else grabbed it

thesmiler

Anyone had phantom availability on ET yet?
It seems on .com all regional/domestic routes (ADD-LLI, ADD-BBO, etc.) are available and bookable, however ANA (or the call center) can't see them.

Booked a flight from ADD-BBO which was not ticketed correctly and now I have trouble getting them to reinstate it.

kokonutz

Trying to burn off my UA miles, looked to book some flights. Over and over again, it shows Saver O on LH, and over and over it bombs out after the payment page, and on the phone they say, sorry it's not available at all.

Stupid merger. Stupid SHARES. Stupid UNITED.

WineCountryUA

ongoing issues with LH
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ity-again.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...aitlisted.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...-recently.html

EWR764

Again, the same availability on the same flights will also show on Aeroplan as well, so it's not just a UA problem. My suggestion is don't even bother with the UA award search engine unless you are looking at UA metal. ANA is more accurate and easier to use, IMO. Of course, the ANA site missed the recent SQ bonanza, but I'll take day-to-day consistency with my go-to tool and hope I'm just lucky enough to catch a once-in-a-lifetime deal when it comes around!

star_world

Agreed - very untruthful of Lufthansa.

kokonutz

Looks like (yet another) CO legacy issue.

Interestingly, my outbound AAward on BA booked straight AAway AAs AAdvertised!

JetAway

I can certainly understand Koko's frustration. For whatever reason, less and less premium space on the "good" airlines seems to be available to MP members. One of the previous biggest benefits of *A for MP members was the wide range of quality carriers with premium award availability but that seems to be rapidly disappearing (last weekend's SQ awardfest not withstanding).

golfingboy

And it is not. I agree SHARES has its set of issues, but this is not one of them.

LH is releasing phatnom O inventory, not UA.

I understand your frustrations, but don't blame UA/AC/etc for something that is out of their control. The only other option they can realistically do is yank LH award searches until LH resolves the issue. I'd rather get phatnom availability.

EWR764

It's not only for MP members. Just in the last year, across the board *A carriers have become much stingier with award space. Definitely frustrating for those of us who like to plan aspirational awards well in advance and tweak them (sometimes dozens of times) as departure draws near.