sokolov

Yesterday, I called UA to book a crossborder itinerary that combined UA and AC coded&operated segments (unavailable on the UA and AC websites). The agent gave me a booking code and told me to call in the next day before midnight CT to pay - he said it takes time to get AC's confirmation that the seats were actually available.

How long does that usually take?
Does it depend on how busy AC is, or the opening hours of a certain AC office, or on what?

I've done this several times in the past and it has always worked out, but this time I would like to get it ticketed quickly.

Oh: If you are in a similar situation, do NOT go to the UA website and attempt to pay for your booking! This will cancel your reservation without warning! You will have to call UA again, and have them book your trip again, and the price may have changed in the meantime, and in any case you will be at the end of the queue.

RobOnLI

United doesn't allow instant ticketing on certain partners. To be honest I thought AC was one that they could instant ticket but possibly not. LH/LX, on the other hand, do allow it.

What's happening is United has to give AC 24 hours to cancel the inventory being held by your ticket. If AC doesn't "bark" (aka cancel it) then UA can issue the ticket and collect the fare. Note that the fare is locked for these 24 hours so as long as AC allows the inventory to be sold then UA will honor the fare you were quoted.

I've found that 24 hours is generous. Some agents will ticket it before 24 hours if you call back, others will ticket up to midnight the day after.

So wait the 24 hours and call back and get the ticket issued assuming AC hasn't cancelled the segment on you. I've never had AC cancel a segment. I've had issues with TK.

-RM

Kannai

I often have AC code shares and can't remember it ever taking longer than 24 hours to ticket. But I've rarely (if ever) booked them over the phone.

transportprof

I've had plenty of instant ticketing on AC flights booked through UA, but this was all done via the web. Not sure why a phone booking should take longer to ticket?

emcampbe

I've done UA tickets with aC segments, even booked over the phone with UA (to have the AC segment booked on the actual AC flight number vs. UA codeshare flight #). It took a few hours to confirm and ticket, but it wasn't longer than that.

jmanirish

I had a similar experience, OP. Got off the phone, pulled up the itinerary on UA.com, and was able to complete the booking.

Often1

AC generally tickets instantly or close to. Even when it does not, there is no reason for UA not to accept payment and issue a confirmation, but not an e-ticket. The confirmation comes with the clear warning that the reservation but not the ticket is confirmed.

Call back and speak with another agent. If nothing else, your e-ticket ought to be confirmable upon payment by now (or not).

sokolov

I tried that (with a few hours buffer), and the system canceled my reservation as a result. I had to call in and start from scratch - except for that the agent could see what segments I had requested, so she could copy that information from there.

She instructed me to wait 20 hours before calling again. Seems long.

jmanirish

Very odd. Sorry it didn't work.

sokolov

It did work out eventually. I waited 16 instead of 20 hours from the second booking before I called to pay.

But I'm still curious what the usual processing times on AC's end are, and what that depends on. :-)

WineCountryUA

Curious -- what did you not pay at time of booking?

Seems you have gotten a bunch of responses on processing time. However, like many things airline related, we will likely never know all the things that impact the processing time.

sokolov

I would have been happy to, but the agent said that I can not pay until seat availability is confirmed the next day.

cfischer

on AC? That makes no sense to me.

WineCountryUA

I have never heard of this for any UA ticket with any partner.

Was this a UA phone agent or a 3rd party travel agent?

RobOnLI

Absolutely this happens. I explained it in my post above. I've had this happen several times in the past. Once when booking TK (and that whole ticket cancelled before 24 hours because TK denied UA's request for inventory). Twice last year where tickets included LH, AC and CA flights. I waited 24 hours on both of them, called back and got the tickets issued and my card charged.

When UA won't ticket the flights right away because they want to give their partners 24 hours to confirm/deny the availability then UA will NOT charge the credit card. This is why the flyer must call UA back after 24 hours and request the ticket to be issued. At that point the credit card is charged.

If I had to guess, UA does this because if they issue the ticket and then the partner cancels the inventory request within 24 hours (which the partner has the right to do), UA is then on the hook to get the passenger to their destination without any upcharge in fare. This way if the partner cancels within 24 hours UA cancels the whole itinerary and is not responsible for transporting the passenger, nor for refunding any fare.

-RM