JayhawkCO

And maybe I've just been incredibly lucky, but since they went to dynamic pricing and all that fun stuff, I've changed UA segments on tickets (not necessarily legs) that involved AV, TG, BR, SK, CM, SN, TK, and OS without having to do anything more than occasionally HUACA-ing. I've never had an agent accidentally "delete" my ticket; I've only had them tell me that they can't book the flights I'm looking for unless every flight has new availability. I politely thank them, tell them to leave the flights be and I'll look for other options. Then I call back 20 minutes later and usually get the situation resolved. I've even had my currently booked itinerary (including flights on BR and TG in addition to two different UA flights) changed via the chat option on the website with no ill effects.

I find as long as I spell out to the agent that, please, whatever changes they might make, to ensure that the current flights that I don't want to change are untouched, I have never had an issue. I obviously can't say that that's how everyone's luck has gone, but I have enough of my own personal sample size that I don't hesitate to call and change things when I need to.

It certainly might behoove someone to be more cautious than my approach, but if you "need" a change, I still feel there's not much risk involved in just calling and asking.

cfischer

It is certainly true that all of that can be done, just finding an agent willing the 'break the rules' in the case of voluntary changes is very difficult. I found in cases of involuntary changes there is a much higher likelihood of getting this resolved. Just 2 weeks ago I had a partner award go belly up where the LH segment cancelled on an LH connect to NH itinerary. The LH flight was not resolvable (no flights that day at all) ... the NH flight had no inventory ... not only no award inventory, it was J0! Took quite a while, but UA was able to 'delete the LH segment' and re-issue the ticket with the NH segment only.

snowoody

Not sure if this is new. I have been looking for ticket from US to China. It seems right now the search engine won't be able to price the itinerary well. For example, I can find segment availability SFO to ICN and ICN to PEK on UA website. But I cannot make it show up when I search SFO to PEK, even using multi-city search. Calling does not help either, as it seems the agent sees exactly the same thing I see. I can confirm the availability exists on other airlines website and can also be ticketed. Just want to get some advice if there's any work around on this?

JayhawkCO

Higher up in the thread (within the past month or so) there have been reports that UA is not booking US-China award flights on one ticket for some reason. No resolution sadly.

Kmxu

I called 1K line twice for two different itineraries; one is US-TPE-PVG and the other is HGH-ICN-US. Agent tried to help; one agent tried to get help desk involved. No dice😂😂

Basically, you cannot find availability of either TOK-PVG or ICN-PVG. But the return is available. TPE-PVG/other Chinese cities are available both ways. US-China award ticket is impossible to get on any *A carrier.

cfischer

in theory and at a higher price with appropriate layover ... I guess one could book US-TPE and TPE-PEK as separate tickets ...

Kmxu

Yes. This is the only way for not paying United 700K miles business award ticket to PVG. If you book EVA Airways flights from US, there is no need for overnight (except for one LAX-TPE flight).

pnsnkr

None of the saver business or first awards seem to book first class for domestic segments. Is there no way to get a save business or first that includes domestic first without an exorbitant upcharge?

WineCountryUA

There are very few domestic first savers in the first place. You can try multi-city which will book as a domestic award plus an international award.

Lux Flyer

Find a connecting domestic segment that also has I (IN) space currently available. Otherwise assuming this is part of a longer international itinerary in business saver, if you let it book the domestic segment into economy saver, you can have them just waitlist the business saver segment in the PNR since you would have already paid the cost for a business award for the whole line of flight. You would need to do the search as origin-destination to get this to construct properly, if you multi city search it I believe it will fare break at the construction points and charge you economy saver (domestic) + business saver (international), which is then not eligible to WL the business segment without additional miles.

JayhawkCO

Or you can just book the first leg into X or XN and pay cash to upgrade it (if available). Based on my experience, it's a better value in cash than in miles if you did multi segment.

emcsweeney

Apologies if this is a duh, but I searched and didn't see anything. I could swear I did a stopover years ago, but can't be sure. When I called the Premier desk today, the agent told me yes, and tried to help, but ultimately directed me to the multi-city search. When I did that, I was only able to get the two separate flights for about 10K more miles than the original connecting flights. Sorry if I'm missing something here!

WineCountryUA

Traditional stopover are no longer available. It was replaced in late 2016 with the excursion perk, which means you book outbound AAA-BBB and return CCC-AAA and then you add a free BBB-CCC and effectively having a stopover at BBB and CCC. BBB-CCC must be in the same region and not in the region of AAA. (This is a bit simplified.

emcsweeney

Ok thanks so much!

cheltzel

+1

When I was booking an award through IAD last November I could only get economy fares and was looking at doing the exact same thing. I found that a separate awards in domestic first was going to cost me at minimum between 35k and 40k miles (for a flight that would increase my layover by something like 8 hours). More convenient flights were much higher.

The cash upgrade to domestic first was $149. If you value award miles at $0.02 per mile that is $700. At $0.01 per mile it is $350. Awards on my flight would have been close to 70k miles