Originally Posted by
captaincool
Sorry for the self-bump, but does anyone know if this is a valid itinerary? I would prefer not to waste my time calling if it isn't even allowed...
I have tried calling twice so far: 1st agent was clueless about most everything so I politely hung up and called again. 2nd agent put me on hold for about 15min to make sure a stopover was allowed on a roundtrip award flight. She then told me that I couldn't connect in SFO for >4 hours, even though it was an international flight. The phone cut off in mid-sentence before I had the chance to point out it was an international flight though....
I've encountered the same problem, whereby the web site refuses to accept a routing that seems to be perfectly legal. In one case, I was surprised to see that I could book it just fine on the Lufthansa site, but not on the United site, although they were the same flights with just different codeshare numbers. I managed to trace the problem to a set of minimum-connecting-time prohibitions that UA had created for no apparent reason other than to deliberately block that particular routing and force you to one that I assume is more profitable.
The bottom line is that you cannot trust the UA site to give you the best routing or fares. However, a solution that has worked for me is to omit a segment or two and then call in to have the missing segment added back before ticketing. On the phone, they seem to have access to an unrestricted reservation system, but it helps to tell them exactly what flights and booking codes to use.