Originally Posted by
aacharya
There is no way to combine 2 one-ways into one RT without redepositing and rebooking, along with the commensurate fees.
That's what I thought, thanks for confirming.
My remaining questions on that would be: if I were willing to eat the redeposit fee (I might be), how quick/reliable is the timing of canceling the original outbound booking (one way), then immediately re-book the same seats as part of the round-trip? I'll be doing this over the phone with the Steerage Class call center. I'll be prepared to spoon-feed them all the details, but they would need to push the button to cancel the first booking and then grab the same seats for the second booking...assuming the seats would become available right away. How likely is it that the seats I just canceled would immediately be available to the same agent on the same call? I assume there's no delay in using miles that are re-deposited when canceling a booking (correct?).
Originally Posted by
aacharya
No stopovers are allowed on one-way bookings.
That's what I thought, thanks for confirming.
Originally Posted by
aacharya
There is also a fallacy that you must book flights 330 days out to get availability. Most carriers do not release "all" availability then.
I do know that. However, in this case, I've concluded that we need to book the flights as soon as the first batch of seats become available, roughly 330 days out. Why? Because...
1) Our travel dates are not really flexible (only could move maybe 1-2 days each way, and then that would eat into an already-tight trip plan). Moving the dates more than that is not an option for us in this case.
2) I've been watching availability for the flights want. 2 seats in biz are available for a short window (usually no more than a week, never for more than 2 weeks) then disappear from availability (I'm looking on United's site and ANA's). I check for availability searching back 3-4 months and I check every day, and have been doing so for several months. Availability for the seats I want has
never re-appeared after the initial availability window in any search I've done. So while I know it's true that additional seats
may be released at some later point (I know this is true as a general statement), it seems crystal clear to me that given our other constraints, on this trip my best (and perhaps only) chance to get the seats I want is when they first become available.
3) We're picky. I have my eye on a particular flight on a particular *A carrier. While we would have some additional options if we took a different carrier/routing, it's a high priority of us to get the flight and carrier that we're chosen. In this case, more important than adding the stopover.
Originally Posted by
aacharya
Wait to book until the RT, and even if you don't find direct flights, book the 1-stops, and call to waitlist (will work on UA metal only) for the direct flights.
As I indicated, we do not want to fly on UA metal, and given our constraints/priorities, it doesn't appear that waitlisting is an option for us.
Sounds like my options are as I suspected: if I really want to be sure to get the flights I want, book two one-ways and skip the stopover (unless I can be reasonably confident of doing he one-way booking, then cancel that, then immediately rebook the same seats as part of a round-trip...still not sure about that).
Maybe I can't have my cake and eat it, too. I can live with that...just wanted to be sure I wasn't overlooking any other worthwhile options.
Thanks again to all.