Originally Posted by SAT Lawyer

I was recently successful -- albeit not without considerable effort -- in finding and booking business class award travel for my wife and myself to Australia and New Zealand for 90,000 miles, with travel scheduled for the very busy Christmas/New Year's period 2006-2007. I hope that my experience may be helpful to others in finding similar inventory. Here are a couple of noteworthy items . . .

(1) A big problem with trying to find inventory 331 days out is that even if the outbound is available, the return window will not yet be ripe. Conversely, if one waits until the return window opens up, by then the outbound inventory may be long gone. What I did -- and it may be inconsistent with official UA policy (given the general three day hold period) -- was to have UA book my outbound space when I found it, but leave the return open and extend the hold to three days past the target return date I provided to the agent.

(2) One of the great enigmas is at precisely what time UA opens the 331 day window. [Note: even if the 331 day window is open, inventory may still be zeroed out]. At various times, I had agents tell me it was midnight (Chicago time). But in my experience, the window never opened at midnight or shortly thereafter. An agent I spoke to last night who always works the overnight shift says that she generally notices that UA releases inventory between 3 and 4 a.m. (CST). Sure enough, when I called shortly after 4 a.m. this morning, I got the return inventory I was seeking.

YMMV, but hopefully this information is helpful and useful to someone.