Originally Posted by
a_Salika
I have been looking online for revenue tickets that match the travel awards available on United and can't find any matches. Additionally, I am unable to get the awards ticket for my child without booking an awards flight for myself at the same time. Would it work if I make him look older and then call them later and change his birth year?
If there is no award availability for the ticket you wish to purchase, then there is probably not much you can do. Generally what I do in such a situation is check what flights have award availability, then purchase my own flight on the same flight, and then redeem miles for the award flight for the child. The reason is that if for some reason the award availability suddenly changes, I'm within the 24-hour window for cancelling and getting a full refund on my revenue ticket. As a 1K, I can also cancel an award ticket for a refund, but I'm not sure how long the mileage redeposit will take, and I want immediate use of my miles to try again. I don't care if the refund takes a few days because it just goes back to my credit card. Possibly you might feel otherwise if you are close to your credit limit but have an unlimited mileage balance.
As for being unable to book the flight for just the child, can you please clarify why you think this is impossible. I have booked award tickets for a young child on an international itinerary on a couple of occasions without issue, but they were always on United metal.
Another possibly useful data point is that I once needed to redeem Citi thankyou points for an international ticket for a 3-year-old. Citi would not let me book for just a child, and as a result I put in the correct birthday but the wrong year and purchased the ticket. This made me slightly nervous. However, I was able to link the ticket to the child's mileage plus account and fly without incident.
Well, actually, there sort of was an incident: The trip was to latin america and United kept giving me complimentary upgrades even when I requested not to and got myself upgraded. Therefore, I recommend assigning an aisle seat to the child and a middle seat to yourself. That way if you get upgraded the person next to your child will almost certainly be willing to trade. Since there are no complimentary upgrades to Europe, this probably won't be an issue for you.
The one thing that is different in your situation is the involvement of TK instead of just UA. That could conceivably change things.