flg8rmatt

Not sure if there is anything that can be done, but I was trying to change an existing reward reservation through CO that is on a mix of US/UA metal to an al UA itinerary.

The CO webpage shows availability on a specific flight for award travel, the United website shows this same flight as available for award travel, but the CO agents cannot seem to book this flight despite "seeing" the availability.

Is there any way to get onto this flight (thereby avoiding flights on US)? Is it a glitch that might clear up or is UA blocking CO from booking this flight?

For those who are wondering, it is a 12.5K coach award on 11 December BNA-DEN-PHX on UA. 1523 dep from BNA, then UA flt 329 DEN-PHX. It is the DEN-PHX flight that is causing the problem.

Not the biggest deal if the change cannot be made, but the 21 day window is approaching so....

channa

What are they giving you as the reason?

You've done the legwork, and it looks good. Must be some other issue.

flg8rmatt

Thanks for the quick response. The agents just say United isn't allowing them to confirm a coach seat on the DEN-PHX leg. I suppose there could be a myriad of reasons as to why they can't do it...was just curious if others have run into issues like this?

I could understand if all the availability was gone and the CO system just hadn't updated yet, but the fact it shows up on the UA website as bookable seems to discount that.

channa

So are they attempting to book it, then it's coming back unconfirmed?

If you really want it, push up to a supervisor and have them call UA and find out why it's not confirming. They may be reluctant to do this since 1) it's time-consuming; and 2) you have a valid itin, albeit on US.

flg8rmatt

Correct. They can't "sell" the seat on the DEN-PHX leg.

I'll think about. I'd have to call back after work anyway. Not sure if it is really worth the effort for the same reasons you list above. US is bad, but it's not the end of the world...and I don't need to create undue stress for myself over a free ticket.

Thanks for the help!

channa

Not exactly. Not being able to sell the seat is different than selling it in and it coming back unconfirmed.

Not being able to sell the seat sounds like an issue on CO's end. They should be able to manual sell it if *net is not allowing it for whatever reason.

Good luck!

flg8rmatt

Oh, ok. Thanks for the clarification. Maybe I'll give it a try this evening or tomorrow morning...if the availability goes away between now and then, it's not the end of the world.

flg8rmatt

Just to follow up, I was able to get the flights changes without a problem yesterday morning. I'll just assume it was a temporary glitch.

channa

Either that or an ignorant agent.

billedr

there is definitely something screwy going on with co.com and reward availability, especially with partner airlines. As a platinum, I should be seeing additional reward availability at minimum on CO flights and on STAR partner flights. However, during the .com outage yesterday I was unable to log in. I did a search that I had been looking at over the past several weeks and suddenly, saverpass awards in coach and business/first appeared on Alliance partners (AC and CM) that didn't appear when I was previously signed in as a platinum. I rechecked today (now that the site is back up and I can sign in) and the same thing is happening - ie: there appears to be MORE availability of saverpass reward seats to non-Plats on partner flights, rather than the opposite. Keep in mind, it appears to me that .com is prioritizing platinum availability correctly on CO operated flights, only reversed on partner flights. It has been reported to CO (twice, actually because the .com support desk lady was utterly clueless about what I was describing to her so I had to call again).

flg8rmatt

I noticed other behavior...whether I selected show 15, 20, or 30 flights, I would get the same limited number of results (about 5 options on CO, maybe 8 on partners). If I selected show "ALL" flights, however, a LOT more choices (especially on partners) were available.

Not sure if it matters, but I have no status on CO....

sbm12

Untrue. You only have expanded availability on CO flights.
This has happened before and they fixed it eventually. I'm sure that they will get it fixed again eventually.

qlabdad

had a similar issue yesterday looking for saverpass from EWR to MCO after Xmas which I know is a difficult time. Found UA/US combination showing as available in blue but returned a technical error at the last step of reserving. Tried several times. Called CO.com support who said the flights were not avail as seen on their end but continued to show as available on the web site. Agent said they loaded new software yesterday morning that was causing problems with partner inventory. I was SOL. Since their system was obviously at fault and after being hung up on by another agent I called the Elite line and got a very helpful agent. I politely explained these were CO issues and I asked to be put on CO flights for the Saverpass amount. She forced an exception that was approved for direct flights. In the end it worked out but it took a lot of persistance and over an hour of phone calls. My problem is it's a hard enough game to find saverpass availability and to find it and not able to book is very frustrating. CO.com agents didn't seem to care or aren't empoweree to so anything.

billedr

That's interesting. I was told the opposite by a CO agent a couple days ago when looking to book a different award trip. At the time, I was seeing availability at 2 different levels (12,500 miles and 17,500 miles) on the first segment of a saverpass domestic coach award (on CO metal). I thought it was a glitch. When I called, the agent said that was because of STAR alliance rules which allow for additional reward inventory (albeit at higher mileage levels in this case) which she indicated was in effect for Onepass PLATS on both CO and STAR partner flights. That doesn't reconcile with the discrepancy noted above, but does seem to indicate that additional reward inventory is opened up to plats across all of STAR.