FT-hss

Before I cave in and pay $400 to award booking specialists I want to know if I can get any ideas to help myself with all the collective wealth of knowledge here!

So here goes. I have 320K United/UR, 160K US Air, 300K Avios split almost equally between me and spouse. I need 4 tickets (2 kids). My dates are fixed 6/22-7/15 may be a day here or there at max. I could not find any "Saver" (80K rtrip) tickets on ANA or UA web sites. 280K United will give me 2 economy "standard" (140K rtrip) tickets but that will almost exhaust my UA miles and all 4 of us must fly together.

Any pointers/help/encouragement would be greatly appreciated!

fthss

FriendlySkies

A subscription to ExpertFlyer might be worthwhile. You could set an alert for saver Y seats.

life_is_travel

Look for saver award availability from other major airports and then search separately for domestic segment saver award availability to PHX.

E.g. this itinerary is currently available for 4 saver award tickets

UA1555 departing PHX 7.25 am 6/23/2013 arriving IAH at 12.01 pm 6/23/2013
LH441 departing IAH 4.15 pm 6/23/2013 arriving FRA at 9.05 am 6/24/2013
LH756 departing FRA 1.25 pm 6/24/2013 arriving BOM at 1.00 am 6/25/2013

SQ423 departing BOM 12:20 am 7/16/2013 arriving SIN 8:15 am 7/16/2013
SQ12 departing SIN 9:25 am 7/16/2013 arriving LAX 1:30 pm 7/16/2013
UA6528 departing LAX 5:25 pm 7/16/2013 arriving PHX 6:49 pm 7/16/2013

burlax

Look for various routings via *A hubs and major airports in NA (JFK, EWR, IAH, ORD, LAX, SFO, YVR, ONT, YYZ), Europe (FRA, LHR, IST, MUC), and Asia (TPE, HKG, ICN, NRT, BKK, SIN).

FT-hss

life_is_travel, thanks but I am not able to see this routing even when I changed the default results to '50' on UA award search. Are you seeing "Saver" i.e. 40K ow/80K rt) awards? That would be good news if I can find those.

FriendlySkies, thanks, I will look into Expertflyer.

burlax, thanks. This shows I have much to learn. I don't know what is *A hubs. Also not sure how looking at Eurpo/Asia hubs would help since my start/end is in NA (PHX).

Please keep the suggestions coming! Thanks!

burlax

B/c it's easy to get from NA to FRA/LHR or to NRT - there are always SOME flights / routings available. Whereas, flights from NA directly into BOM are mostly NOT available. And the search engine is not going to check routing via Asia or Europe. So, what you do is you look for availability into BOM from Asia or Europe, and then construct your route further by looking for the missing piece from NA to Asia / Europe.

By the way, if you're looking to construct an award trip, the way to do that is to construct the route by hand and to use the search engine to look for availability on individual flights.

astroflyer

Hi FT-Hss,
*A = Star Alliance, these airlines are partners of both United and US, and you can redeem your miles on itineraries including these airlines. So the suggestion to check other hubs was to see if you can route yourself through one of these foreign hubs and continue on the other carrier. For example, if you can get to FRA, there are Lufthansa options from there.

Just one extra bit of information: Jet Airways is a partner of United, but not *A. They're pretty comfortable to and from India. I think you're going to have to call to find out their availability. I'm not sure what status you currently have with UA or US, nor what it gets you, but a phone booking fee may be involved in the process.

Good luck!

FT-hss

Thanks Burlax. This knowledge along with life_is_travel's sample routing, I am now making at least sense of this. I am able to see his routings separately on ANA and UA search engines. I think the taxes will add up but at least I should be able to use my miles. Thx!

Aahh. *A, I get it now. I had heard abt it but was slow there in realizing. Thanks. So the question is, if I am able to hand code an award trip using individual segments for 4 of us on all *A airline through *A hubs, then how do I ask/who do I ask to use the US airways miles, on let's say Lufthansa flights? Is there a *A booking phone number that can present the whole itinerary to, and they will book the whole thing using whatever *A miles I have? I am not worried so much about booking fees/time involved in dealing with phone agents if it I can learn something this valuable out of the whole experience. Please enlighten @:-)

GretchenJ

Would the PHX-IAH-FRA-BOM BOM-SIN-LAX-PHX itinerary be considered RTW?

I'm not seeing the saver availability either - wondering if there are more tricks that I don't know!

burlax

You call reservations with the carrier which miles you are planning to use and say that you need to redeem a *A award trip. Then tell the agent that you already checked availability and have the dates and the flight #'s. Then give this info to the agent segment by segment.

It is, but it usually tickets anyway. If the agent starts to object, HUACA.

FT-hss

But I must use all of my UA miles and cover the shortfall using US miles. So can I call both one after the other? Would it still be the same round trip itinerary as GrethchenJ was asking? (good question there, GretchenJ) When I call UA, wont they ask me what I am going to do about the shortfall? If they wont give me a complete reservation, how can I then go to US Air agent to apply the US miles to the same booking to make it complete?

burlax

You have to use miles from one carrier. So, either UA miles and call UA or US miles and call US. If you don't have enough miles on either, you sometimes can use points.com to trade one kind of miles for another.

life_is_travel

Yes, I am still seeing saver award availability for all these segments. Use multiple destination search on United and build up this itinerary one segment at a time.

Also, this was just an example of what is available. As I was saying earlier, if you are not getting results when searching from PHX-BOM, search from other major airports (LAX/SFO/IAH/ORD/EWR/JFK etc) to BOM and if you find space, it is always easy to find space on the domestic segment to and from PHX.

FT-hss

I see. Another questions please. If I have enough UA miles for 3 economy/saver award tickets can I buy the 4th one from UA for full economy price and still have all 4 travel together as one/same itinerary/reservation so we don't get split up? If yes, is this some thing I can handle with the UA/*A agent(s) using the HUACA method (see I am learning some lingo too).

Also, an expert had mentioned being able to use the US miles for upgrades even though not flying US on a *A itinerary, or is it my misunderstanding?

burlax

You/they can travel together, but the 4th person will be on a separate PNR. You can use UA miles to book three ppl, and US miles to book the fourth person, but you need to make sure that there is award availability for four people.