skimthetrees

As gengar correctly pointed out, upgrades are per segment but there is no need to upgrade both segments in the itinerary. Your flight will consist of two segments, SEA-TPE and TPE-HKG. You may choose to only upgrade SEA-TPE for 30k miles, or you may choose to only upgrade TPE-HKG for 15k miles, or you may choose to upgrade both for 45k miles (30k+15k). I would suggest the best value is to only upgrade the SEA-TPE segment.

night718

Did United's recent Mileageplus changes affect SAUA at all?

skimthetrees

Until someone upgrades a specific route we will not know. United removed their award chart so they can charge whatever they want and change the price without notice. I doubt they have made changes to SAUA yet but we do not know yet. My guess would be they may not make changes right away to SAUA or if they do it will be a modest increase. These are not common awards so the impact to UA will be low which is what leads me to believe either there will be no change or a modest increase.

kuofrumdnj

hello FT, long time "intermittent" reader here; haven't needed to fly for many years and thus have been out of the game somewhat. Anyways, needed to travel to Taiwan/TPE next year and purchased a ticket with EVA. Fare class B and I was able to upgrade my outbound successfully with my UA miles. However, the next day, I'm trying to upgrade the return trip, but is now getting an error code 118. Specifically, I get the following:

"We were unable to complete your request due to a technical problem. In the U.S. and Canada call 1-800-UNITED-1 (1-800-864-8331) within the U.S. or Canada, elsewhere use the local phone number. (Error code: 118)"

I tried again the next day, and still the same. I called United and they weren't of much help, essentially telling me that I should call EVA...

I have plenty of miles in my account, so that shouldn't be an issue. Availability is also plenty, with UA's award site showing 3 award seats available.

What does the experts here recommend I do? Keep trying? Some other ways to resolve this?

gengar

I'm unfamiliar with the specific error code, but be aware that award space is not upgrade space on BR. For SAUA, you need to check with BR for "Z" bucket availability. It isn't shown on the BR (or UA) website, so you need to call in. UA website will show BR straight awards, which is BR "I" bucket that has been made available to partners.

kuofrumdnj

Thanks for the pointer! I've been using UA's award availability as a proxy, but after reading your post, I did call EVA to check. The lady said there's 5 in the Z space! So looks like also plenty available. Still not sure why the error still coming up. Just tried again, and same result.

Think I should ask this in the general SAUA thread?

Thanks again,

bocastephen

What information are you putting in the online form - can you show a screenshot of each field where you are entering information? If you enter too much, it will sometimes error out.

silent129

I've been having similar issues trying to book flights on the United website, and have even called into UA 1k to ask them to book, but they aren't able to ticket the itinerary even if it shows as available on the UA website. Frustrating!

Boringbarry

has anyone had issues with getting refunded the points for SAUA? I had a flight which got canceled due to covid, and got refunded the cash but don't see the points in my account.

kuofrumdnj

Thanks for this suggestion, you are a genius. IT WORKED!!!!! I will detail what I did below, perhaps this may help others.

To answer your initial question, I've been filling out everything, my wife & my name, our ticket number, frequent flier (i put in our UA's), EVA's confirmation #...etc. Essentially all that can be filled out, I filled them in.

After reading your comment, I went back to my browser and deleted everything that is Optional, essentially only leaving our names, departing & arriving airport, date, airline, and flight number. Usually, before I click submit, I would open United on another tab to sign in, as the website auto-logs me out after a few minutes. This time, I forgot to do that and after submitting, I actually was able to proceed to the next step where it shows that indeed there is upgrade availability! I was too excited at this point, as I've been trying for a few days without success, so I went ahead and click confirm, without remembering to log back in, and of course on the next screen, the website prompts me to log in. After doing so, it went back to the blank SAUA form. So no go yet! I was able to replicate this by "manually" signing out in another tab after initially signing in & completing the form. But in the end, even when I do sign back in before I click confirm, the page always take me back to the blank SAUA page.

What finally worked, for whatever reason, is entering my EVA FF information (I've been putting in my UA's before) while leaving everything else bare minimum. That worked immediately and I was able to confirm this on EVA's website and select our seats.

Thanks again for the huge help and inspiration!

kuofrumdnj

for my current flight, I had to initially change the return date, and thus the outbound, which I was able to successfully upgrade previously, had to be cancelled. The points did not show up automatically in my United account even after waiting 4 days. After several calls to UA, was finally connected to a supervisor at MileagePlus who had to fill out a form or request that goes to "HQ" per her to put the points back manually in my account. She said it may take 5-7 business days to process, but I checked 2 days later, the points are back. It was a major PITA, but they did eventually come back.

Boringbarry

thanks for sharing. Seems kinda strange to me that you'd have to bug UA about it rather than EVA taking care of it

gengar

They're UA miles, so you have to deal with UA. All that's happening is UA is applying a SAUA to a BR ticket; it's not like the miles are being transferred over to BR or anything.

Namna_Banana

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to say thank you everyone for your kind advise.

I stumble upon FT back in 2016 when I was doing research on how to upgrade my EVA flight using chase points I have accumulated.

At the time points and miles is so new to me (and still is) and English being my second language I would spend most of my free time reading up treads and answers trying to understand how the process works and thanks to you guys, I was able to upgraded my to ticket and had an amazing experience on my first premium cabin.

My husband and I are planing to go back to Thailand again and seeing a post about United is no longer upgrading their partners ticket (but I guess they still do) I got really nervous since that’s the only way I know how to upgrade using my chase points. I get back on FT trying to figure out how else to do it and so glad I found this thread again!

I just want you guys to know you guys are appreciated and I know there are a lot of newbies like me whom forever thankful for all the advises and answers :-)

Dave510

Nice to see you again Namna, and glad to hear your trip went well.