zlc

The don't fix on the YVR-Europe non-stop, try connect through YYZ, much much more flights and award seats available out of YYZ than YVR, I got 4 seats this summer for SEA-FRA initially routed through YYZ.

mad_atta

Thanks to various people on the board who assisted with my newbie questions. I finally succeeded in booking the following:

BHE-WLG (NZ, Y)
WLG-AKL (NZ, Y)
AKL-PVG (NZ, J)
PVG-ICN (OZ, J)
ICN-ROR (OZ, J)

ROR-ICN (OZ, J)
ICN-SYD (OZ, J)

It wasn't my first choice of return options, as I was keen to avoid Asiana's lousy angled lie-flat biz seats for the overnight return flight, but I just couldn't make any other options work (and for 30,000 miles - or in my case $525+tax - apiece, beggars can't really be choosers).

I am still a bit confused about the MPM rules. A preferred return routing, which was turned down by the agents, was ROR-ICN-PVG-SYD-AKL-BHE, which is 9173 miles and well under MPM+25% of 9,543. I'm still not sure why that wasn't OK, but by that point I had well and truly lost the will to live.

Onwards and upwards!

Insomnia4u

A couple of days ago I talked to a seemingly great agent who checked a previous booking. She told me that as of 09.aug, USDM employees were told not to book awards after 31.12.13 because of the merger.

Postings in several forums states that people seems to have no problem booking awards for next year. So either she was wrong, or because of the resent troubles with the lawsuit they extended the awardbookings.

What do u guys think?

Air Rarotonga

What merger *LOL* ?

=> HUACA

SubPar

This LH thing is infuriating. I am on United.com and I see this IAH-FRA-DEL flight available, even as a saver award. ANA shows it as well. And yet, US can't see it. Is there anything I can tell them to have them check a different way? The most recent agent tried searching just IAH-DEL, then tried it point to point, and then tried some other way and says it's just booked. But that simply can't be the case. Does LH release seats to *A partners an a per-airline basis or something? I'm reaching the end of my patience with this. I wish I could just burn United miles on this and be done with it.

geo1005

Tough route to break into given Cathay mainline and its low-cost subsidiary Dragonair have it covered so well (frequency AND quality-wise).

mad_atta

As per my post above, I finally manged to book a semi-complicated award itinerary on NZ and OZ using US miles. Through several iterations of the itinerary, I could easily view it online using the US Airways 'Manage Reservations' function. However, once it was finalized and ticketed yesterday, it is no longer able to be viewed online. Given the difficulties they seemed to have ticketing it and the multiple changes that were made (which could, in turn, means some irregularities in the way the ticket was put together), plus the fact that Asiana's own website doesn't seem to have any function for viewing itineraries online, it makes me a bit nervous not being able to see it and monitor it. I also don't have any very effective printable itinerary, as the email confirmation I got from US has barely any information in it.

I spoke to reservations and web help who were unable to do anything, though they did seem to think that the reservation was OK. Is this a frequent problem, and should I be worried about this? Are there any common and or easily fixable errors that might be causing this?

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

call USDM, ask them for the ticket number and any individual airline PNRs they might already have (they can't provide the latter for some airlines).

call each airline and ask specifically 'do you have a ticket number against this booking?'. that ensures it has been ticketed properly and won't auto cancel.

it used to be possible to check an OZ itinerary on line via their 'select seat' function... but there is another thread on the OZ forum saying you can't preselect seats now until 48 hours before departure.... so maybe that function has gone?

in any event, it is unusual to not be able to see your bookings on line via USDM. so my gut feeling is that this needs further investigation.

tommyleo

Wow! Who knew? Maybe that explains why I was so easily to book an F/J trip to HKG from PHL last July with this ridiculous six-segment routing: PHL-CLT-SFO-PVG-SIN-BKK-HKG.

Interesting facts about that crazy trip:

- My PHL-CLT leg departed at 5:30AM -- sunrise in PHL. My PVG-SIN leg departed at 7:10PM -- sunset in PVG. So I was exposed to over 25 consecutive hours of daylight.

- Flying SIN-BKK-HKG allowed me to eat breakfast in Singapore (in the SQ lounge), lunch in BKK (before the TG Spa massage), and dinner in HKG. Yup, breakfast, lunch, and dinner in three different countries on the same day. I also ate a ton of food on the two flights.

My return was the comparatively tame HKG-BKK-FRA-JFK-PHL.

BTW, I'd imagine that I wasn't the only poster on this thread who jumped for joy when the news came out that the merger may be off!

SS255

A CP agent told my father that US has not loaded any * partner flights beyond 3/31/14.

anchor79

No way. I just booked myself a ticket for Late March/Early April 2014 Ticket last week. It sure works!

beachfan

Hi all;

My predicament is SQ just cancelled my SIN-MLE original outbound flight (business class RT award SIN-MLE-SIN) and put me on the one that night, which gets in too late to make my island transfer.

They went from 2x Sun-Sat to 1x M-Th and 2 x F, Sat, Sun. I was trying to get to Male early (daylight) on Tuesday, there is one flight the day before which will get me in on time (although requiring an overnight on Male).

There is no award availability showing on EF on the day before. Revenue is Z4 and the seat map looks wide open (4 seats taken). Could easily be most of the open seats are spoken for by the folks who were on Monday AM's cancelled flight (the same flight # I got cancelled on on Tuesday and haven't heard yet.

Is there any point in calling SQ or will they tell me to call US?
When I call US, is it reasonable to expect they call SQ or will I just hit the wall of no availablity (per EF)?

Thanks in advance!

And thanks to Award Wallet, I was hesitant to join them but they are the ones who told me, haven't heard from the airlines yet.

deltaflyinglawyer

My experience tells me that each USDM agent has an internal memo of his or her own creation.

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

normally your first port of call would be USDM, but if there is no award availability on the earlier flight they aren't going to be able to do much for you.

you can call SQ... they have the ability to create award space out of existing inventory. they will need to create a seat which will then need to be revalidated by USDM... so there could be a little bit of back and forth... but I would think sq is your best bet.

metoo

I see a bunch of days available for awards tickets for LAX to TPE on EVA airlines on United Website. Is U.S. airways allowing you book the ticket or not?