chinatraderjmr

Back in the 90's thru around 2003-2004 I used to easily call UA & have them reserve & ticket flights on *A partners even if there was no UA flight involved. (Acting in essence as a travel agent). Since then I haven't tried that often and the few times I have I was told to call the carrier directly. Now with the new 016 ticket restriction and PQD's, If possible, I will be doing this again and often. No one seems to be able to give me a definitive answer on what the actual policy is.

I'm in Singapore now, coming in from Dubai & BOM & on my way to NY. Even though the PQD / 016 restriction does not start till next year, I decided to try to buy my SQ BOM-SIN-FRA-JFK ticket thru UA. (The DXB-BOM portion was purchased directly from EK). I Wanted to have the ticket issued in BOM anyway as SQ has special F (P) fares from India-USA that are over $4000 cheaper then if the same ticket is purchased anywhere else. I made 3 calls to UA & surprisingly, on the 3rd call (after being told no twice) the agent was willing to book it but in order to get the fare she directed me to UA's Mumbai ticket office for payment. While a pain compared to just booking this & paying online with SQ, I ended up with my SQ ticket issued on 016 stock, thus if PQD'S were in effect now, earning me over 12,500 EQM's (no bonus on SQ for first), 17000 RDM's w the 50pct bonus and MOST IMPORTANTLY, aprx $6,000 towards the $10,000 min spend on 016 issued tickets

Did the agent make a mistake booking this for me? Are the other two agents wrong in not booking it? I would think UA would not mind doing this since I assume they get paid the same commission as a travel agent but who knows????

Does anyone know UA's official position on this? It's going to be very important for me as we'll as I'm sure others either who are based outside the US ( even though right now foreign addresses are exempt). I used to use my Dubai address for MP but changed it to NY last year. I will change it back if I must but this would be much easier leaving it in the US if I can use UA to ticket my SQ flights

IADOrange

I've called and booked tickets purely on SAA and Turkish without issue.

If you're really worried, you could call and tell them you want to do an award booking, then ask what the price would be in $$ and change your mind mid-call But I've never had a problem.

sbm12

UA absolutely CAN issue tickets on their stock for other carriers. Not all the agents know how to do it and they aren't always willing to do it as you saw. But they certainly can.

DErg

I've had UA book several tickets that were entirely US metal/flight numbers no problem.

mgcsinc

I'm glad someone started a thread about this. It really is a separate topic from the new PQD requirement, and one I'm interested in.

So, are all of the OAL fares available for purchase this way? If so, what of the insistence of some in the PQD thread that it is impossible to get the right fares and keep on 016 stock?

UAPremExecflyer

No problem: done SQ, TG, BD (when they were around), BA, TK, LH, LX all without UA as part of the booked itinerary. And all online.

prestonh

I had 16 coupons on a UA ticket once, with only 8 of the segments on UA. 6 of them were added on during travel. Anything is possible if you get an agent that knows how to ticket.

chinatraderjmr

Thanks all - so for those of us that fly the majority (or even quite) a bit of our elite miles on other *A airlines, the 016 ticket rule really wont have a negative effect (or at least much of one) I was really concerned that without SQ credit, even though i would still make 100K EQM's, the 10K spend might not quite be there for me..............But if I can just call UA and have them ticket SQ flights as stand alone segments, Im more then fine. A shame 2 of the 3 agents I spoke with refused to do it.

Can anyone guess which agents said no and where the one that said yes was based?? Hint....Yes agent says "Aloha" and no agents say "Y'all"

UA-NYC

What's the benefit TO UA of doing this with OALs? I'd do the same thing, but not sure if it will generate PQDs if no UA metal at all on the ticket, ESP if all non-ATI routes.

sannmann

This seems to be the only way currently to book an OAL *A itinerary through United.com: start as an award itinerary and select the pay cash instead feature at the end.

mre5765

United says this will generate PQDs.

As to the benefit, UA can now definitively know how much revenue its US based 1Ks (the sub 1Ks have trivial ways to bypass the PQD requirement, and so they are not a concern until the PQD waiver is unwaived) bring to its partners and use this as a stick when dealing with its partners.

UA-NYC

...their trial balloon plan said it would - a lot of details still to come though

Personally, I can't see it, as UA recognizes little to no benefit from that, and this change is all about steering more $ to UA.

(do they get ANYTHING from an 016 ticket on SQ metal, for example?)

boulderado

Yes you can do it this way, but when I checked on a LH itinerary, it put me into S instead of the cheaper G seat. (I found this on a quick search on Expedia). It seems that you would have to do some legwork followed by a phone call to get better prices, but I'm sure many of us do this already...

mherdeg

The cool thing about using UA "as your travel agent" is that you get a ticket on 016 stock. Also, you don't pay a ticketing fee (which means you save money vs buying directly from TK, for example!).

We've always known that operating, marketing, and plating carriers can be three different carriers on a ticket, but it's always fun to see an example.

username

If one has a 016 ticket on other airlines, does it add any complication when you run into irregularity?

My company has UA as the preferred carrier, yet our AMEX agent tickets on different ticket stocks - even say you do UA on the outbound and someone else on the return (and you pay 2 ticketing fees + 2 change fees). There is no way to tell AMEX to issue 016 tickets, right?

Thanks.