laffingleigh

To the point - how should I consider finding award availability on LM? i.e. if I look and do not find what I want, should I be checking daily? Weekly? Monthly? Or should I be moving on and trying other ways to book flights?


Longer discussion -

I have a bunch of LM I'm hoping to use. I also have 5 upcoming trips on which I could use them:

• August - NYC-Chicago
• September - NYC-Munich (HELLO FIRST CLASS!)
• October - possibly Colombia
• November - NYC-Dallas, Houston-NYC
• December - NYC-DEN Colorado
• Feb/Mar 2023 - NYC-Sydney

I live in NYC, so I can fly from EWR, LGA, or JFK. I'm ready, right now, to book August, November, and December. I thought to myself, I'll surely be able to use my LifeMiles on at least 2 or 3 of these trips to get some business class. Right?

....right?



To my shock, I am consistently seeing the same thing on every search:


Weeks and weeks of "Not Available".

UA's site shows gobs of availability. LM shows zero United biz class available in the entire months of August, November, or December to any of these locations, in both directions, even when I search weeks before or after. I'm baffled.

Big sigh.

Thoughts? Specifically, how should I look at this situation? What is the tactic here? I'm willing to do whatever.

Is this a situation I should be checking periodically (like weekly? daily? multiple times per day?) because LM award availability changes often?
Or should I be considering that "LM won't have award for this trip"?

I can't figure out any trends for LM and award availability. I'd love some insight.

iluvdoco

Award availability comes and goes. A month ago there were lots of seats and now nothing. So frustrating. I regret transferring points over.

vitaminJ

There was literally Y availability on this AV flight everyday I've been watching for weeks. Up until recently (when I finally have the miles), there is no Y availability at all through the end of the schedule.

Question: Will the availability come back?

AxelJF

Ignoring the fact that LM is simply sometimes not showing anything due to incomprehensible IT issues (or whatever is going on there), it might be worth log out and log in again. Sounds silly, but have seen it working. Also use the search filter and select the airline you intend to fly with instead of the "Smart Search" or "Star Alliance". The LM search is not always "smart" and a simple filter such as that may help you to have flights appear that won't show up with the default setting.

I start to believe the buggy nature of the LM search tool (which is still user-friendlier than many other award search engines!) is supposed to behave like that just to frustrate users and to deter them from using their miles.

Maayan

That's absolutely correct. If you checked the "Keep me logged in" box when you logged in, and your session expired (minutes or hours later) - you won't see any availability whatsoever. An easy way to identify this situation is by noticing how fast (immediately) LM returns the "Not available" display for any search.

Simply log out and back in.

And do not check the "Keep me logged in" box. Just log in fresh every time you access the site, and you'll avoid this defect. That's been my experience.

Maayan

Remember to not limit yourself to searching for the specific city pairs. Sometimes you will find availability to a destination only as a connecting city. For instance, LM may not find any availability for EWR-DEN, but will find EWR-DEN-COS (and you hop off at DEN; I doubt UA would care with an LM award ticket). Of course, that's if your situation allows it (ie a one-way ticket and no checked bags).

Similarly, I recently searched TLV-SFO and found only Y. Then I searched TLV-LAX and magically there was C on the very same TLV-SFO legs along with Y on the throwaway SFO-LAX leg.