allenaustralia

Hi, have an issue which I have rung up and chated with United several times.

I have made award bookings from Australia on United from Australia (PERGUM, ADLGUM, SYDGUM etc) over the last 15 years over 20 times, the last time was in Feb 24.

Checking now (cause I would like to do another booking) there is no award availability from any Australian city to Guam for the next year (and vice versa). I checked paid tickets and also the same.

HOWEVER the individual sectors are available - i.e PERSIN, SINMNL, MNLGUM etc. And can do split award bookings.

Clearly I think this is an error and so chatted/rang to various people in reservations/mileage plus and in all but one cases they failed to really understand what the issue is.

The reasons given were:

1. There is no award bookings allowed to Guam from Australia any more. I ask why and the answer was they think Australians are now banned from visiting Guam. (I said that clearly not true, to which they said no this is the case.)
2. There is new service SYDGUM starting in April 2025 (which if true is great news) and in anticipation of this all award and paid flight bookings from Australia to Guam have been disabled in preparation for this new route launch. (This logic confused me, maybe Ford could do this - in anticipation of new model being released next year we stopping selling cars for the rest of the year!).

Finally spoke to someone who understood the problem and said if the sectors are available should be able to book, but could not price it and so contacted another Department to which agreed an issue and said we think there is bug in the system as clearly we want to sell tickets to people wanting to fly to Guam. Should be fixed within 24 hours. It has now been a week and not fixed.

My questions are - 1. is this issue only happening when trying to book from Australian IP address. If someone in USA tries to book PERGUM, SYDGUM etc to they find availability?
2. How does someone contact United to get this fixed?

Thanks
Allen

NJSwamplands

I tried with a US IP address and cannot find anything from PER or SYD to GUM on google flights ( on UA ) or United's website

United747

UA doesn�t publish fares from SYD-GUM.

SQ is the only *A carrier that does, but they don�t allow for travel on UA

NJSwamplands

I was just posting a reply to the OP's statement.

"I have made award bookings from Australia on United from Australia (PERGUM, ADLGUM, SYDGUM etc) over the last 15 years over 20 times, the last time was in Feb 24.

Checking now (cause I would like to do another booking) there is no award availability from any Australian city to Guam for the next year (and vice versa). I checked paid tickets and also the same."

allenaustralia

Hi, thanks for your reply. I am not sure I follow you. United Airlines has for the last 15 years sold flights/award bookings from SYD (and other cities in Australia - cause I have done many times). There is plenty of award bookings SYDSIN on Singapore Airlines. So why would United stop selling these flights when involves Guam. Is there some new restriction on Guam flights - because for the last 15 years there was not. Can you explain further.

United747

Sorry, I�m talking paid, cash fares. I don�t know what that means for award tickets (if anything). Some of our more knowledgeable members might know if there�s a correlation

jsloan

It�s possible that it�s an error, but I wouldn�t bet on it.

Obviously this is nonsense.

No such service has been announced, and it�s highly unlikely that a phone operator would know about it ahead of any public announcement.

Then she didn�t understand the problem, at least in whole.

There are four possibilities. (1) UA may have messed up its award calculations when it recently went through a pretty significant price increase and started exercising dynamic award pricing for partner flights in earnest for the first time; (2) UA may have messed up the Australia to Oceania routing rules, disallowing transit in Asia; (3) #2 could have been done on purpose; (4) UA may just have pulled inventory for the combination � as, frankly, I doubl they�re particularly interested in the business of people who are flying SYD-GUM.

If you can book it as a multi-city award, then that�s it�s price until / unless UA decides to change it. Otherwise, I don�t know how we would distinguish option #1 through #4.

nyc6035

Best suggestion I have would be IF you have a travel agent you work with, have them book you the two segments you would need (in a revenue class) and have them queue the record to the UA rate desk for pricing. When the rate desk gets it - they will notice there are No fares filed from SYD to GUM. Perhaps they'll be with it enough to know that's a mistake and ask a manager. Then perhaps it will get fixed.

Alternatively, if you can find the name and email of the head of United AP sales or similar, perhaps they would be interested enough that they're losing sales in his/her region to complain to the revenue management team.

This is a tough one. It's a matter of getting to someone at the rate desk or revenue management to take some initiative to fix it.

jsloan

And which two segments would those be? SYD-TYO-GUM, with a 10-hour flight on (non-JV) ANA or Qantas? SYD-MNL-GUM, with an 8 1/2 hour, less than daily Philippine Airlines flight? Because the only way to get there on UA metal is via the mainland: SYD-(IAH/SFO/LAX)-(HNL/NRT/HND)-GUM. (ETA: forgot SYD-SFO-MNL-GUM )

Just because two cities both have UA service does not mean that they will necessarily file a fare between them. They'd have to negotiate for somebody else to operate 2/3+ of the trip. Why bother?

This is fantasy. UA isn't losing sales in the Australia to Guam market any more than they're losing sales in the Australia to Africa market. They can't serve every market, and they don't try.

Even if UA were interested in this business, they don't need to file a fare between SYD and GUM. OP could combine existing fares if so desired.

OP: To answer your original query -- from a US-based IP address, I do not see any awards available via a single search from SYD to GUM. I do see SYD-SIN and SIN-GUM via MNL, as you suggested.

BTW -- this map probably explains why UA isn't particularly interested in trying to file fares, or even to allow award redemptions easily: A map from the Great Circle Mapper - Great Circle Mapper . The available flights go thousands of miles out of the way.

bmwe92fan

I see revenue flights from SYD to GUM via HND next month -- but there is not one single award flight available for the next year... UA just put through a ton of changes to program I now call "MileageMinus" this past week -- I would give it some time to settle and keep checking....

erik123

I don't see any UA fares filed for SYD-GUM on ExpertFlyer.

uanj

I think this is a relic of two things in the past: CNS-GUM service and published award charts. Because UA flew CNS-GUM there would have been published fares and an award schedule between Oz and GUM, at the very least from CNS. (The old days when UA would proudly fly you from CNS to BOS on 10 segments all operated on antiquated 737s.)

The responses from UA are both amusing and ludicrous. If there is no published fare I think you have to get two tickets and connect yourself. VA announced last year they would start CNS-HND service but I am not sure they ever did.

TrayflowInUK

They started last year. CNSHND for 7 hours on a 737Max. And a 3-4 hour cxn to get to Sydney. That�s a no from me but I know people who�ve done it!

NJSwamplands

Maybe you can reach out to your good friend that works miracles at the ZRH desk?

jsloan

CNS-GUM is ancient news, unfortunately, but you're likely correct that they would have published a SYD-GUM fare (and certainly correct that there was a CNS-GUM fare) at that time. However, it would have been either routing- or distance-limited such that when CNS-GUM was dropped, the fare wouldn't have been bookable anyway. They would have put in a restriction that required flying the UA CNS-GUM flight. (Also, if pmCO ever offered 737 service from HNL to California, I don't remember it

You're 100% correct about award charts, though -- there were published charts between any two regions, and unpublished routing rules that defined what regions could be use as a connecting point, as well as (in some cases) the number of transfers allowed. It's quite likely that Australia-Oceania allowed a transit in South Asia, which would explain why OP reports having flown these tickets before. That's why I listed either an accidental or intentional change in the award routing rules as possible causes.


Not true. The fact that there are no UA fares filed for SYD-GUM has no impact at all on whether or not UA can sell you a single cash ticket from SYD to GUM. All it means is that you'd need to construct a "broken fare," meaning that you'd "break" the fare at a transfer point. For example, suppose that OP was going to travel SYD-MNL-GUM. With no SYD-GUM fare, OP would look for a SYD-MNL* fare that (a) could be plated on UA ticket stock and (b) that allowed and end-on-end combination with the MNL-GUM UA fare. This SYD-MNL fare could be with any airline -- UA wouldn't file one for the same reason that they don't file SYD-GUM; there's no money to be made in flying somebody SYD-SFO-MNL. But they could use a Philippine Airlines or Qantas fare if those fares met the two criteria listed: if those airlines chose to allow UA to ticket those fares, and if the fares were written to allow end-on-end combination with a UA fare from MNL-GUM.

* Faring is actually quite a bit more complicated than that, and in theory there may be other valid combinations depending upon where the traveler is going next, but It think the point is made.