Next week I travel on SQ from SFO to HKG, then on TG to BKK and then return on BKK. I was told by UA 1k that they can't book my seats, even though I start my trip on UA.

Now I have to call both SQ and TG to book my business class seats. God forbit I ask to upgrade using miles (I know I can't do that)

Now, tell me again (other that loosing my bags) the advantage of Star?



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UA1K,Plt. AA, M/M DL,
Hilton Diamond, Hyatt Plt, Starwood Plt.

That's not a * problem, that is a typical UA "we don't care about *" problem. Never had any problems with LH reserving seats on UA, SK, AC.

yes curt: Lufthansa, Austrian, Lauda, Ansett (before going bankrupt), Air Canada, Singapore, Varig, SAS, Thai all were able to reserve specific seats on all StarCarriers (including on UA), for me.

UA (in FRA, or the european international desk in Ireland, or at any UA ticket office in North America) never gave me a positiv response to my requests for seat reservations on other Star-carriers (the only UA exception was the downtown UA office in Zurich, now closed).

[This message has been edited by Rudi (edited 10-08-2001).]

Lack of computer compatibility among *A carriers is IMO the mother of many problems within the alliance, the issue of this thread being one of the many problems that this causes.

UA1kMFR - It's got nothing to do with Star. You have to call SQ because they are flying your first intercontinental segment. If you were flying SFO-HKG on UA, you would call UA.

Yup, you are right Seawolf. If you had taken UA over the water we would have booked the whole itin. However, if UA does not take you over the water, then we refer you to the other carrier. This is for a few reasons. Whoever takes you over the water on your first segment has control over the tkt. Ua would not be able to guarantee the air fare since it's not our fare. And if you called back a few days later and that fare was now USD2000.00 more i'm sure you would be unhappy. The *A is for seamless travel, but you have to remember we are all seperate companies. We do not have the same rules for fares and also we do not share profits from each other. If UA tkts a SQ res, the money goes to SQ and not ua. ALso, if you are traveling on SQ metal, then SQ can offer you the lowest fare, UA would offer you basically regualr to full fare tkts. We do not have access to their low fares. Hope this helps.

QUESTION - Who did the entire reservation? Whoever holds the PNR for the entire reservation should be able to request your seat selection. Only at the time of check-in will UA's system allow multiple check-in facilities on the various counterpart partners' seats but then only if their system allows through check-in at the time you check-in for your UA flight.

If however, your travel agent booked all your flights for you, and even though UA is your first segment, UA may not be able to see the rest of your booking without it going into 'check-in' mode.

UALRSSRDTWRR, it really has nothing to do with how much he paid for the fare. He just wants his seats selected.

OPPS....I'm sorry, i read the question wrong. This is what I get for posting at 5:30am with no sleep.LOL Ok, in regards to seating, the most UA can do is to request a seat for the psgr. this does not say they will get one, since the other carrier assign the seats by computer. Myself, I usually just ask the *A carrier to give a seat so that the psgr has one. When people ask for an aisle or window or specific seat, the system can come back with no seat at all. A seat is better then no seat. But then no matter what I do, the other carriers don't alwasy give a seat.

So given the experiences by FF's and UALRSSRDTWRR's remarks, it seems to be that only UA can't assign seats on other * carriers.

I think UA can assign seats on at least AC.
I booked a reward ticket through them and they were able to track down a confirmed seat with AC.

AC can reserve and confirm a seat on UA but it can't ASSIGN a specific seat on UA. I ticketed a YYZ-SFO flight on AC flightnumber but UA metal. The AC agent actually put me on hold while she contacted UA to have a seat assigned - she couldn't do that with the AC system.

On the way back from SIN, the agents in SIN could issue my SIN-NRT and NRT-SFO borading passes for UA, but not the connection on AC for SFO-YYZ. I had to get to the AC ticket counter in SFO to get the BP