I'm trying to book a saver business class award ticket for next July on the new DUB-LAX Aer Lingus flight using MileagePlus. The actual routing is VCE-DUB-LAX. (The VCE-DUB leg is economy and DUB-LAX is business class.) We originally had coach tickets for VCE-EWR-LAX on UA but that is a standard economy award ticket and I'd much rather take the EI flight for a multitude of reasons.

Yesterday I went online and changed my tickets and everything looked OK but it said to call UA reservations to have it reticketed. The person I talked to said the DUB-LAX leg wasn't ticketed and she couldn't get into EI's system to confirm it. Fair enough, since EI isn't a *A partner things don't run as smoothly when it comes to award tickets. She put me back on the original VCE-EWR-LAX routing.

I did some reading on FlyerTalk and saw that it can take 24 hours for a UA award to get approved by EI. So I made the change again. I waited 25 hours and it still was showing up on united.com as me needing to call them. I did get an EI PNR so I called EI. The very helpful EI CSR said that the VCE-DUB leg is booked but since the DUB-LAX flight is so new UA probably hasn't bought an allotment from them yet. That's strange since a whole bunch of new award travel from Europe shows up on united.com routing through DUB now. She suggested that I keep my eye on it for about a week and that (obviously) she couldn't help me much since it's a UA award ticket.

So...does this sound about right? How long should I really wait for the EI booking to get approved? I can always switch back to the UA routing but I'd rather not unless I know the EI flight isn't going to happen.