BlissWorld

MANUAL SELL @:-)

I called CO to redeem some of my "valuable miles ". The agent asked me what cabin I would like. Despite ANA showing no F or C avaialble, I requested F. The agent said "ok, I have to request the flights and you will have to call back later to see if the award seats are confirmed."

(Fast forward to later...)

The F award came back confirmed even though ANA showed it as not available.

So, there you go. This is why CO people have been reporting success in scoring these impossible awards like SQ 1/2 F while we UA folks just watch and drool.

That's it. Next year, all of my UA flights upgraded with SWUs and CR1s will be credited to CO.

zrs70

Is SQ 1/2 in F selling for regular F miles?

ORDnHKG

If ANA tool showed it is not available, that means it is not available to any *A partners not just UA.

Are you suggesting CO use a different system that we should forget all *A partners and join CO instead if we want to get award seats on SQ ?

BlissWorld

I'm not suggesting. It's a fact.

When an agent requests an award seat from a carrier and the carrier goes back to the requesting airline either confirming the award or denying the award is called a manual sell.

United used to do this but agents are now heavily monitored to never do a manual sell because this increases the cost for United.

Continental is requesting the award from Singapore. The *A published awards on ANA have NOTHING to do with whether Singapore is going to confirm or deny. SQ will most likely confirm because this generates revenue.

My guess is that CO is doing the manual sell temporarily because of the Star Alliance integration. However, it's a perfect time for OnePass members to take advantage of it.

But, since CO is going to be in close partnership with UA, and IF they at one point offer mutual FF benefits, then its a no brainer to accrue all miles on CO, to avoid starnet blocking.

indo79

You mentioned SQ 1/2, so are you saying that SQ is allowing F redemptions on their 77W and A380 flights?

gbsfo

IIRC an agent doing a manual sell, NN request and the like, is bypassing starnet and directly requesting the space. It could well be that the space is there but that SQ is not publishing it to starnet. They do after all make some space available for KF members.

I would imagine the the willingness to so a manual sell is likely due to delays associated with CO integrating their systems to starnet and other *A systems. I would get this while it is hot.

denCSA

Actually, you are mixing up different concepts. Every transaction is a 'manual sell,' because by nature the agent always has to request a seat. When an agent requests availability for a segment they see the buckets and number of seats available, then put in an entry to sell from that availability screen by line number. That is called a 'short sell' in industry speak.

Now, if an agent has the flight information, they do what is called a 'LONG SELL' (which is what you are confusing manual sell with) and this involves bypassing the availability screen and directly requesting the segment from the airline in question.

The difference is in the SHORT SELL scenario the system gathers all the availability data ahead of time from the relevant systems and displays it to the user. So, when the user tries to SHORT SELL (the entry looks something like 01O1) the system would immediately reject it as it knows there is no availability.

When an agent LONG SELLS (the entry would something like 0SQ11O2MARLAXNRTNN1) and that request is immediately sent to the airline's system (in this case SQ), and the airline would respond with either a confirm, unconfirm, or waitlist response (there are several variations on each response though).

THAT is the difference here, and THAT is why UA restricts it's agent from performing long sells because it requests from the other carriers system directly.

hobo13

What happens if CO stops doing the manual sell next year? Or SQ stops approving the seats? Then you end up on CO without any SWUs. And without E+ for that matter.

Seems like a lot of risk just to fly SQ.

DBCme

Nice info, thank you.

gleff

Did you score SQ1/2, and not SQ11/12? Because SQ11/12 are still available as regular mileage F awards to SQ's own members, while SQ1/2 are not...

channa

Posting something like this is a sure-fire way to get it shut down sooner rather than later.

ORDnHKG

I am still puzzling about why on earth even SQ's own members cannot redemm on SQ 1/2 instead CO member can.

AquaDyne

So, you're counting on taking advantage of CO in 2011 and beyond based on your experience today!

But you acknowledge today's experience is a temporary anomaly!

Have fun on the other side. See you back in 2012.

holtju2

Yep. OP is somewhat confused with these different concepts.

I doubt that CO would have access to SQ award inventory that would not be available to other *A partners. Also there might be POS issues that doesn't always always show the exact inventory using ANA tool.

MatthewLAX

UA agents can manual sell to. But don't count on it sticking...

http://upgrd.com/matthew/update-circ...l-failure.html
(with a tip of the hat and a humble apology to holtju2 for doubting his wisdom)

I agree with others: CO is most likely going to patch up this hole, so I'm still crediting my miles to UA.