I just had a booking experience I'm wondering if you all can help me out to understand.
I wanted to book a first class ticket using miles from ORD-LAX-NRT (the direct had no availability). There were 2 seats available in ON class that seemed to be correspond to 2 seats available on United.com (sometimes it would come up in the search but then other times it would show not available, and it would be consistent on both sites).
I finally got it showing up in the search on .com and called UA to book (I am taking an overnight connection in LAX so couldn't do it myself).
The VERY helpful agent said she could not see the availability, and said "it looks like someone else is trying to book it right now". I said I can still see it, and she suggested I go ahead and try to grab them myself, and then she can add the segment from ORD-LAX.
So that is what I did - I managed to book these seats, then gave the agent the PNR. She had a little bit of trouble because the system was so fast with ticketing this reservation that she kept getting kicked out, but eventually she was able to exchange it. This all happened while on the phone in the span of about 10-15 minutes.
So here are my questions:
1.
Did my searching on .com affect the ability of the agent to see these seats? I wasn't clicking through on the saver when it came up in the grid, just searching.
2. My understanding from
this post is that "O" should have been the proper class to look for saver availability in Global First. But it instead corresponded to "ON" and indeed on my reservation I'm booked into ON class and there's a checkmark with "Upgrade Confirmed".
So which is it? ON or O? Is there some sort of instant upgrade on award seats, or something to do with me being 1K? On EF this class is called "Saver Award for Plat Elites & Upgrades" The agent also seemed surprise that I was referencing ON class as if she was looking for O - should she have needed to do something else for me as a 1K?
No complaints here - I got the seats I wanted and got a bit of a kick out of having to book this and have the agent change it for me. Just want to understand better for the future.