Originally Posted by bubble o bill

Add one more to the Wiki List. And, be warned: don't rely on UA's assurance that the CA flight is reinstated.

I received the email in Chinese in mid-March, a couple months after making a reservation that included IAH-PEK, and, after a TWOV stopover, PEK-SYD. I called MP within 5 minutes of receipt of the email, after logging in to MP Account and seeing the flights had been cancelled. A very helpful CSA - although insisting that I must have cancelled the reservation myself, even inadvertently - spent the next 1 1/2 hours working to reinstate the flights. USAir refused to reinstate the positioning flight to IAH, so UA put us on one of its own flights. The other 7 flights in the itinerary, were, she said, reinstated.

Later that week, we fortunately called each airline to (re)request seat assignments. CA said no (notwithstanding the assurance from the UA CSA that it was reinstated) and insisted that the IAH-PEK ticket had been cancelled by UA. I called MP again. After the (again, ultimately very helpful) CSA insisted that that was not true, I persuaded her to contact CA anyway. She came back quite a while later to tell me that, yes, CA continued to insist that the ticket was cancelled and refused to reinstate the ticket. UA opened up seats on its own flights to and from another city.

But, this cut our 2 full days and one 1/2 day TWOV stopover to only one full day and two half-days - not enough time to really see the sights. After thinking about it, I called MP and said I would prefer to just pay for the visas and have enough time in PEK and asked if they could move us to a flight a day or two earlier, which the CSA very kindly did, actually offering several choices. She assured me that CA PEK-SYD flight was still OK. We immediately called CA and did get seat assignments.

Three phone calls totalling about four hours. UA totally did the right thing, bent over backwards, and I am very appreciative. BUT - who knows?

I then changed password and PIN. I did not know anyone else had the same problem until happening upon this thread. Now a month later, I have logged into MP many times. It shows the flight reservation, but does not allow me to View or View/Change Seats (I get an error screen). So, perhaps this is a mechanism to prevent on-line cancellation? Or (if anyone has read this far), should I call MP again to make sure all is OK? Either way I am going to be on pins and needles until actually in a seat this summer on the CA flight to SYD.