Originally Posted by
DogHead
"We manage award availability on our Star Alliance partners just as we do with United's own saver awards," said Jeff Kovick, a United spokesman ... "It is an ongoing balance of ensuring we meet our customers' interest in award travel on partner carriers with United's need to generate revenue on our own flights."
So there you have it... from the horse's mouth.
Full story here:
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008...award-tickets/
How would you interpret or "un-spin" Jeff Kovick's last quote? To me, it seems he's saying that, by blocking award availability on their partner flights, UA can stand to gain by forcing their customers to buy revenue tickets on UA's own flights.
However, in Nick's story in Washington Times, he cited an example of not being able to book any of the 12 daily FRA-MUC flights from Oct 6 to 13 using UA miles, even though the ANA tool showed availability on 10 flights a day on average. In this example, UA doesn't stand to gain anything by blocking these intra-Germany flights that UA does not serve. So I'm thinking maybe I am not interpreting or unspinning Kovick's statement correctly...