Tried to book an UA-CA-TG-OZ award with an Air China leg on PEK-CNX in economy in November. The flight leg still shows availability in both Business and Economy.
Thought something was fishy when the itinerary ticketed almost instantly, but no partner PNR came back on united.com, so I called the partner airlines to confirm the reservations... Thai and Asiana legs looked fine, but the Air China rep could see the UA ticket but no corresponding reservation in the CA system.
So I called the 1K desk today, the agent tried for about an hour to reissue the ticket and get a CA reservation to go through, but after working with a supervisor finally concluded that UA and CA's systems were not properly communicating, and that they'd escalated and I should call back Monday after the holiday week.
The timing of the CA direct flight is really ideal, but I'm kind of terrified to commit to this CA leg, especially with the phantom cancellation issue potentially impacting my TG-OZ return leg in business, which no longer has availability. I'm tempted to route PEK-BKK-CNX to avoid AC all together, even though the timing basically causes us to lose a half day in Beijing.
Anybody have any thoughts or recommendations? I'd hate to lose the PEK-CNX leg and be SOL if the TG availability dries up -- and even worse, if there are still phantom CA cancellations being reported.