Originally Posted by
Often1
UA can force space on its own metal and will generally do so. UA cannot force another carrier to open award space. But UA's *A liaison to TG and OZ can call those carriers and ask them to do so.
Call UA during regular business hours, you will likely need a second-tier supervisor to figure this out and it won't get done with you on the phone and may take several days as it's a manual process. Don't get your hopes up.
Bear in mind that UA can simply cancel and refund. So, the agent is essentially doing something discretionary. Don't get frustrated with the agent.
I called a few more phone agents trying to get someone who would be willing to call TG and ask them to force open space, then decided that it wasn't worth the hassle and rebooked.
Flights we were hoping for were like
SYD-BKK TG 747 O
BKK-HKG TG 747 O
HKG-ICN TG 333 I
ICN-JFK OZ 380 O
Instead we've "settled" for
SYD-BKK TG 747 O
BKK-HKG TG 333 I
HKG-ICN OZ 380 I (sold as 2 cabin but only selectable seats are in the F cabin, somewhat painful redeye 12:30am-4:50am)
ICN-JFK OZ 380 O
I figured the flight is months away; we have very little leverage to get TG to open space because of a schedule change; and we might as well instead confirm the best available space for now and wait for inventory to open up on other adjacent flights. It may be tough to find space that aligns with the ICN-JFK 380 O, though -- we'll have to see.
I have gotten better results in the past: once, in Aug 2012, an SQ award flight BRU-BCN-SIN (SN I, SQ O) got schedule changed into SQ X, and a phone agent was able to get SQ to confirm us back in O on BRU-LHR-SIN. Another time, in July 2014, a phone agent was able to turn our UA HKG-SIN O space into (after a mx cancellation) SQ HKG-SIN O space. I figured it wasn't worth spending the karma this time.