Well, this has happened before , but it is still frustrating....

For many (if not all) of us, we know that award seats become available on UA 331 days prior to departure for a specific flight. Knowing that, I called 331 days in advance to book a F class award trip for my wife and myself to Paris next fall. No problem with the outbound seats - 2 first suites on UA 960. The UA reservation rep recommended that I call back in 9 days to book the return.

9 days later, after checking UA connection and seeing that first was totally empty, I called UA reservations and requested our return seats in F class and received the unfavorable reply of "I'm sorry sir, there are no seats available". I knew this was not correct, and asked if there were seats in the system, to which UA replied, "yes, there are seats available for purchase, but there are no award seats available." When I inquired about connecting flights, I was told " There are no first class award seats available between Paris and SFO on this day."

I asked politely to speak to a supervisor, who quickly told me that not all flights offered award seats - well, was I surprised to hear this! I asked if this was a new capacity control program, and she told me that UA was not "fond" of giving up such valuable seats prior to UA having the opportunity to sell them. I asked her what we should do, since we could not really spend the rest of our lives in Paris (though that would be nice!). She offered to put us in business class, charge us the full 200k miles for the F class awards, and if 2 f class seats opened up, they would move us. What if the seats did not open up? I was told they would not refund the extra 40k miles for the ruturn trip, since UA does not offer a one way f class/1 way C class award. I was told "it is up to you." I booked the c class return, and am now waiting to see what happens....

I am 100% sure that F class will open up, but after having this happen on nearly every trip to Asia and Europe over the past 5 years, I am growing tired of this. Bottom line - if UA has some sort of unwritten rule that does not release "valuable" seats 9-11 months in advance, they need to document this and allow their passengers to understand and plan accordingly. I know that UA's job is to make money, grow the investments of their investors and fill seats, but if a loyalty program is used solely as an advertisement, and not a program to reward loyalty, UA will find themselves in an unfriendly waters as more and more people are exposed to these types of situations .

SFOPremex