GrizShel

I guess the moral of the story is DO NOT CHANGE MileagePlus award bookings at all with Eva Air flights unless you want to risk losing your flights.

I had longstanding booking for us to go from the US to Taiwan in a few days with MileagePlus miles.
Made an online change for the connecting flight on UA to Eva retaining the original flight on Eva Air.

Confirmation displayed, after the change. A few dollars extra in taxes charged.

5 minutes later the Eva flight disappeared from the reservation.

Hours on the phone, Eva informs me that they've canceled our reservation and will only put us on standby with little hope of getting the seats back. UA will help only by trying to book with the (now very limited) existing award seat inventory they have.

Does anyone have any good suggestions beyond just keep looking for new flights?
(this is for an important family event so its very stressful with just a few days left to go now).

I tried find a thread about whether this was a problem that others encountered when changing bookings with partners especially Eva, but couldn't find anything. Not happy at all with Eva.

WineCountryUA

With some partners a ticket change forces a re-issue of the ticket and if award space does not exist at that time, you are in trouble. So best to do changes only with an agent that really understands the situation. Note this is an issue with even a simple PNR split involving partner flights.
This is a partner issue, not an UA issue.

UA-NYC

Happened to me w/BR when I tried to change to a more advantageous time on an HKG-TPE flight connecting to JFK. Twice that short segment was deleted after changing online.

Lesson learned w/BR, have to call it in. Sorry to hear about your situation.

Ping the UA Insider to see if they can help. Or keep calling UA and demanding better options.

Bonehead

Busted

Kacee

Regardless whether the "fault" lies with BR or UA, .com should not allow the online change if it's going to result in cancellation of the reservation.

Often1

1. It is 100% up to the operating carrier, in this case, BR, to go through the mess of looking at inventory when a ticket is reissued. BR chooses to do so and that's the end of it. It works with most carriers and most passengers prefer online.

2. Calling UA and "demanding" is the wrong thing to do. UA cannot force BR to do anything. What UA can do is use its liaison desk to contact BR to determine whether BR will open inventory for OP. Thus, call UA and politely ask whether UA will contact BR and ask. Will take a few days to get an answer and the answer will likely be no, but it is worth a shot.

3. Start looking at other options. Asking UA for options is a low percentage shot. Far better to do the research and make the specific asks.

unavaca

Yep, re-ticketing with BR requires award space to be available at the time of re-ticketing, even for something as simple as a schedule change.

BR did a schedule change (change of flight number and time). There was no award space on the new flight at that time, so I ended up being bumped off the flight. UA called BR and there was nothing they could do. Ended up with a terrible two-stop itinerary on SQ instead.

GrizShel

Kacee, I agree with you.

Often1 I have been doing all of these things (except I haven't demanded anything, though if you said begging that might be fairly accurate). UA tried to work with Eva on this, but of course Eva agents tend to want to blame UA and haven't been very helpful. Looking at all options I can. I did hope that UA would release some inventory for us under these circumstances, but so far no luck on that.
Would never have touched this reservation in the first place if I had known what I know now.

Kacee

UA will not open award space on its own flight SFO-TPE? I would push for that (or a similar alternative connecting to UA metal through HKG, NRT, ICN, etc.).

Hartmann

Huh?

What if it's a schedule change? On BR that forces a re-ticket and if there is no reward space available when the re-ticket occurs, then you're SOL, even if you never touched .com.


So yes, .com should prevent earthquakes from ever happening and bring world peace.

UA-NYC

Yup, always the passenger's fault when UA' systems cause a cancellation with a simple change

Kacee

It wasn't a schedule change. It was a voluntary online change to a reservation that united.com allowed OP to make. Without any warning that the change would result in cancellation of the BR segment if award inventory was no longer available.

And you think that's okay???

Hartmann

Should the .com site allow it? I guess if we want them to break .com to cover every possible edge case of a reward booking, then no it shouldn't allow it.

I do think it is somewhat out of United's control though. I guess they could issue a warning that "hey, you're modifying an itinerary that contains BR segments and could result in cancellation of your flights, please call us to confirm that this change is possible". Other than that, this is a function of how BR treats tickets and the reissuing of tickets (in all circumstances, schedule change, voluntary changes, etc).

mduell

Are you asserting that BR is requiring UA to reissue the UA ticket because a UA flight on the UA res was changed?

I find that dubious.

Kmxu

Feel sorry for OP. It is reasonable to ask UA "nicely" to open some SFO-TPE award-ticket inventory for you in this unfortunate situation. Ask for a supervisor if necessary. For me, this is a good lesson for doing less DIY at united.com when a partner flight segment is involved. Thanks. Good luck.