jsmirand

Agree in that a few years back the key thing was to clear the international premium cabin long haul segment, and generally speaking, once that was done, the domestic segment would be readily available as part of the award, often in F. Now, if you enter a city that requires pairing to a larger airport, premium awards disappear, because while the long haul award is open, UA won't accommodate PAX on a widely open domestic connection six months from now...

747FC

While my originating HNL-USAXXX/USAXXX-HNL connection will not book in F, my experience remains that there still remain limited options from XXX-Europe/Europe-XXX in GF, which I can book while keeping the HNL segment in Y until my waitlist for F clears. YYMV.

Kacee

HNL is actually a great airport from which to be connecting to an international UA hub on a saver award. Relatively speaking, UA opens an unusually large amount of saver space on the Hawaii routes, particularly to SFO and LAX (and at some of the worst redemption rates in the entire system on a cpm basis). It's much easier to redeem, for example, SFO-HNL, than SFO-ORD or SFO-IAH. It would be interesting to know what percentage of UA miles are redeemed on the Hawaii routes . . . I'd bet it's a significantly disproportionate figure.

747FC

T-330 and on, availability is limited to Saver "Y." The Saver "I" awards just don't show up until very late in the game....

jsmirand

building on that... UA is releasing in some quantity their top of the line GF product to Europe, but are going to twist the screws on their customers on a lousy connecting [pick a domestic to ORD/IAD/SFO/LAX] flight in even Y to catch it? Thus, I am buying my own connection fare to catch the award flight out of the US.... but that is better than no premium TATL award flight, and there doesn't seem to be much recourse...

I didn't realize how good I had it years back (and probably was too good to remain true) taking with relatively ease award or upgrade Air NZ down under in I on several occasions, or Singapore I, or LH F to Europe, or even UA metal to Europe, or UA in F to Hawaii year after year.... Now am happy to buy my fare to a gateway city just to enable one final UA big hop flight!

747FC

LOL. Is that Fuzzy Cognitive Map?

Kacee

On an absolute basis, I would agree. But relative to other routes, saver F is abundant on SFO/LAX-HNL.

Asiatraveler15

Maybe it is just my route but I just booked a couple for next year. First class all the way to NRT. Then Thai Air biz. It is not available every day, but I am flexible.

LAX-F to SFO UA
SFO-F to NRT UA
NRT-Biz to BKK Thai air

80,000 miles

Same coming back.

lincolnjkc

Greetings! I hope I've found my way to the right thread; I haven't read every post but I have read the most recent pages.

Anyway... The girlfriend and I are traveling to Australia for our anniversary (and likely "get my act together and propose") in March of 2016. This is also the first time I've ever redeemed miles.

We're booked in saver BF on the way out CLE-ORD-SFO-SYD [no idea why I couldn't just CLE-SFO-SYD in saver, but c'est la vie]. On the way back (March 24) we're confirmed in economy and waitlisted for IN SYD-SFO-CLE. Booked as two one-way awards to keep all options open.

For the return the only thing set in stone is we can't return before the 21st (actual anniversary) and we need to be back in the US by the 26th. MEL would actually be slightly more convenient but either SYD or MEL works for us for the return.

Any ideas if/when additional saver inventory may be released? Or is it a lost cause? It looks like the week we're looking at has virtually nothing in the way of saver Economy left, and the only premium cabin date is a couple weeks into April.

If I do some "slightly weird but not crazy things with routing" united.com is offering to sell me a BF seat (bookended with Economy segments) for a price that's low enough I'm afraid that United would later go "oops, sorry!" and bite us down under at the least opportune time, if you know what I mean.

Dom624

I'm trying to book an award flight to Barcelona in the middle of June, but I can't find any Business saver seats going there from my airport (EWR).

Anyone know when they start opening them up. I recently applied for the MileagePlus Explorer card to hopefully open up more availability and for the bonus. I currently have around 37k miles and 60k UR points. Plus the incoming 50k sign up bonus from the explorer card. I have no United status either.

I was thinking of calling, and booking an economy saver award seat at the business saver level to get waitlisted, but does anyone know when they start opening up business saver availability?

The only flights I see are the partner flights at the saver level, and nonstop at normal rate (65k instead of 30k).

Kacee

Pretty typical. Business saver award to Europe in June is pretty much the holy grail of awards. You can waitlist or check every day for availability. With diligence and lots of flexibility, you will probably find something that works eventually. Your odds increase substantially if you are willing to book the TATL on a *A partner.

Those numbers are not right. A partner business award would 70K one-way and a standard business award on UA metal would be 150K one-way.

Dom624

Oh I meant I only see nonstop economy one way, non saver, for 65k, with no business saver for that flight or economy saver. The rest of the flights are partner flights that have economy saver for 30k one way with stops.

I'm looking for any business saver 70k one way so that I could take business going there, and economy for 30k back. So the round trip award flight would hopefully be 100k. But yeah, unfortunately there's no availability.

I've been checking everyday since the beginning of November. Typically when do they start gaining availability?

Asiatraveler15

You should have checked on that in July. Last month I booked for Europe one year out getting up at 2am for several days until something popped.
You can keep checking there is no real date anything new will be posted, if ever.
Like others have said, you may want to try and find another route(or leave from another location) and catch an out of pocket to Barcelona.

ctownflyer

Did you do Plan B waitlisting for the return or regular waitlisting?

lincolnjkc

Hi fellow CLEer! Not completely sure I understand the question; right now booked as two one-ways:

CLE-ORD-SFO-SYD is confirmed Domestic First/BF end-to-end.

SYD-SFO-CLE is confirmed Economy Saver (XN) [with 772 seats 20A/B selected, so at least of we get stuck in Y it looks like the seats should be decent] and waitlisted for BF/First (IN) on both segments but same flights.