Originally Posted by
kayexalate
I called in to United and of course the agent was pretty useless. He had no idea about blackout dates and told me to just keep checking and that Asiana nor UA may have loaded their seat inventory
That was the correct advice for using UA miles.
It's a frequent misconception that UA's practice is to load award inventory at the beginning of the schedule. They may, or they may release inventory later, or never. So the correct answer is, per the agent, "keep checking."
This is a route where it may be better just to buy a ticket, as fares are relatively low. If the choice is $800 vs. 70K miles, I would pay $800.