Does UA Restrict F Award to LH,LX, SQ?

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It seems fair to say that LH, LX and SQ restrict their F inventory for MP tickets until close to the date of departure. Does UA retaliate and not release F Award seats to these airlines ?
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SQ has always been restricted, and restricted as in never giving inventory. They believe that Premium cabins should only have premium paying passengers. Last week, the floodgates opened and plenty of us booked some nice SQ First tickets
LX usually opens the week before, so if you are flexible, book a UA F ticket and switch to LX in the days before your trip
LH is usually available in advance (on the 340s, 7474, but haven't seen any 380 seats)

Let's be honest, all those airlines are superior in both hard and soft product to UA. So they actually are able to sell F seats versus UA/AA which are mostly Crew (Non-Revs and crew friends) or up-graders (this occurs mostly in J). Also over the next few months UA F might be known as Flyertalk cabin/class due to the recent 4 miles sale hehe
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For OP - i don't believe UA hides any MP award space (aside from 1K/GS buckets) from *A - IME ANA tool has been very consistent with UA award search engine.
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Quote: SQ has always been restricted, and restricted as in never giving inventory. They believe that Premium cabins should only have premium paying passengers. Last week, the floodgates opened and plenty of us booked some nice SQ First tickets
LX usually opens the week before, so if you are flexible, book a UA F ticket and switch to LX in the days before your trip
LH is usually available in advance (on the 340s, 7474, but haven't seen any 380 seats)

Let's be honest, all those airlines are superior in both hard and soft product to UA. So they actually are able to sell F seats versus UA/AA which are mostly Crew (Non-Revs and crew friends) or up-graders (this occurs mostly in J). Also over the next few months UA F might be known as Flyertalk cabin/class due to the recent 4 miles sale hehe
Did UA honour the 4 miles? From what I read they didn't.

I'm trying to book on miles in F DUS-ORD on the 17th of September and it shows available but I can't book it. When I play around and try booking from other cities, it routes through DUS on the same flight but won't go through. Very frustrating!
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FRA-NRT on LH A380
I'm a lucky man, because I booked an UA-firstsaveraward on LH from FRA to NRT on the A380. I booked it online 4 days in advance, and it worked fine.
On the flight back I was on NRT-MUC, and I was able to rebook this flight via FRA one day in advance. ( the rebooking didn't work online just per phone)
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Quote: SQ has always been restricted, and restricted as in never giving inventory. They believe that Premium cabins should only have premium paying passengers. Last week, the floodgates opened and plenty of us booked some nice SQ First tickets
LX usually opens the week before, so if you are flexible, book a UA F ticket and switch to LX in the days before your trip
LH is usually available in advance (on the 340s, 7474, but haven't seen any 380 seats)

Let's be honest, all those airlines are superior in both hard and soft product to UA. So they actually are able to sell F seats versus UA/AA which are mostly Crew (Non-Revs and crew friends) or up-graders (this occurs mostly in J). Also over the next few months UA F might be known as Flyertalk cabin/class due to the recent 4 miles sale hehe
This information has not been correct for some time

1. LX has now stopped making F seats avail for non M&M award travel. All those flights you saw a month ago with plenty of LX F space (ZRH-JNB, NRT-ZRH) are gone. M&M has decided to make LH he airline where F award seats are bookable.

You can find a LH F seat now on almost any route. Even the 380's & 747-8. The trick is they usually only open these seats up at T-14 and then again at T-7. Since the UA site is useless for booking LH (so much phantom availability) the only way to really check and see if a seat in F is avail is the ANA site
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Quote: . Since the UA site is useless for booking LH (so much phantom availability) the only way to really check and see if a seat in F is avail is the ANA site
what about aeroplan.com?
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Does UA not allow LH and LX passengers to book award travel in their F until 14 days beforehand as LH and Lx ? If we cannot book on their F, they should not be able to book on UA F.

Is that definite about not booking LX F? Sad.
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Quote: Does UA not allow LH and LX passengers to book award travel in their F until 14 days beforehand as LH and Lx ? If we cannot book on their F, they should not be able to book on UA F.

Is that definite about not booking LX F? Sad.
Well what about SQ? I mean the star alliance isn't equal, and won't be. Carriers can open availablity or restrict it. I don't know the particulars behind the star alliance carriers award availability stipulations or guidelines internally, but obviously we can gleam that it is ok to limit your availablity as SQ and LX do it.
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Quote: Does UA not allow LH and LX passengers to book award travel in their F until 14 days beforehand as LH and Lx ? If we cannot book on their F, they should not be able to book on UA F.
I actively tracked a bunch of LX flights for my trip a couple weeks ago - despite there being plenty of F seats for sale, no F award seats ever came available. Seems like they're gone for non-M&M members.

LH F, you can't get in advance, but at least they will still open up close to flight time.
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Quote: I actively tracked a bunch of LX flights for my trip a couple weeks ago - despite there being plenty of F seats for sale, no F award seats ever came available. Seems like they're gone for non-M&M members.

LH F, you can't get in advance, but at least they will still open up close to flight time.
Yes, you can get them in advance but they are rare and so few that they are taken the minute they are put out there. But LH F is very easy to get on all routes as long as you book (or change the booking) within that 14 day window
***just these last 10 days I took the LH 380 and the 747-8 in F but had to wait for them to open (and most flights usually do)

The people posting that say LX or SQ or whoever MUST make a certain number of award seats avail have NO IDEA what they are talking about. They post these comments as if they have actually read the Star Alliance member contracts, etc (which is ridiculous). The fact is any member can not only restrict award availability, but they have the right to zero it out completely if they want to (as you can see since both LX and SQ have done just that w awards in F. The reason LX did it (according to a letter sent to one of their HHONORS members and an interview that the President of LX gave was they want their F cabin to be more exclusive, and not filled with "mileage millionaires" from "America". If this makes good business sense for them, then no other *A member is going to tell them otherwise. Regardless of what I've read here as well, the airlines only pay each other "hundreds" of dollars for these F seats so it's not worth it to many of them to allow greater availability. Airlines like UA litterally can't give away their F seats (if they could, you would never see a non rev in F) so it makes more sense for airlines like UA to open more seats then an airline like LX (who just pulled all if their non M&M award avail from stock.
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Quote: The reason LX did it (according to a letter sent to one of their HHONORS members and an interview that the President of LX gave was they want their F cabin to be more exclusive, and not filled with "mileage millionaires" from "America". If this makes good business sense for them, then no other *A member is going to tell them otherwise. Regardless of what I've read here as well, the airlines only pay each other "hundreds" of dollars for these F seats so it's not worth it to many of them to allow greater availability. Airlines like UA litterally can't give away their F seats (if they could, you would never see a non rev in F) so it makes more sense for airlines like UA to open more seats then an airline like LX (who just pulled all if their non M&M award avail from stock.
Are you sure LX not releasing any F award seat, just had a quick look at tonight's flight ORD-ZRH and I was able to book on United site. As with my experience, LX release their O seat around T-20 hours. Did that in February and April. One of the redeeming quality to be a 1K.
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1. LX has now stopped making F seats avail for non M&M award travel. All those flights you saw a month ago with plenty of LX F space (ZRH-JNB, NRT-ZRH) are gone. M&M has decided to make LH he airline where F award seats are bookable.
Not true... A quick search for tonight's JFK-ZRH flight, there was F saver award availability on LX 15.

Yes, LX has progressively made their F awards more difficult to redeem for non-MM members, but it is still there. Usually within 24 hours for US routes and within a few days on some international routes like ZRH-HKG, ZRH-JNB, ZRH-DXB, etc.
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Quote: Does UA not allow LH and LX passengers to book award travel in their F until 14 days beforehand as LH and Lx ? If we cannot book on their F, they should not be able to book on UA F.

Is that definite about not booking LX F? Sad.
To answer the question that OP actually asked, no, I do not think that UA retaliates by restricting their award inventory to LH/LX/SQ. For one, I believe any award space made available to partners is made available to all of *A (on starnet) -- AFAIK there's no capability to block inventory to particular airlines although one could not release space to starnet and only release it to their own FF program. In addition, I don't think UA feels the need to block their award space and probably would prefer if FF from other airlines booked awards on UA as UA has in the past said that they lose money on partner redemptions because on net, UA flyers redeem more on partner airlines than flyers from partner airlines booking on UA.
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I booked a first class ticket (saver award, no less) on Lufthansa in November 2011 for a flight in June 2012.
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