Originally Posted by
Kacee
I doubt the "cart" is dynamic or relevant at all, but if a dummy booking shows the fare as available, then - subject to your existing ticket's fare rules - you should be able to change into it. The website's "change flights" engine often fails to price correctly, particularly for itineraries with any complexities. I would suggest calling, and hope you get a competent agent, noting again that the ability to change into available inventory will be driven by your current fare rules.
I've attached a screen shot showing the flight change I wanted. Note this has continued to show up as an option for over a week now, and, curiously, after choosing it and it says those flights are no longer available, when you go back to select flight, it's still showing. Normally you'd get a little "no longer available" subscript on such flights.
Yesterday I used the chat function and an agent spent about 40 minutes trying to find a way to book that flight, but couldn't get it to work out. Only way she could do it was to specifically select the two LH flights (bcn-muc & muc-fra), which kicked the price up $980/person. Ah... no. Being tenacious (ok, stubborn) I checked again this morning... it still showed. And still failed. So I tried something different. I noticed you could book the Premium Economy fare with the same flights, with the LH flights showing in Y fare class. I then tried BCN-FRA-SFO and forced Y & Z classes. Woah! I ended up with LH BCN-FRA direct, and FRA-SFO in Z, for just $26 more. Get to leave at 1:20pm instead of 9:10am, one fewer flight, UA metal over water. This is as good as I could have hoped for. Hopefully my wife will be doing well at the time, but Stage 4 cancer... the treatment takes a toll, so having an easy trip home was a high priority. Bonus that I'm now off LH TATL metal so I accumulate UA lifetime miles.
