DC flier2

Hi, I just booked an award ticket from IAD to IST on May 21 through United Mileage plus that requires a change in Geneva. I'm a platinum member. I know that Turkish airlines has a direct IAD-IST flight that would definitely be preferable. No award seats seem to be available on that flight right now. Has anyone had any luck getting economy award seats on this Turkish IAD-IST flight? I set up an alert on expertflier to let me know if one comes up so I can change my ticket. Does anyone know if Turkish airlines will sometimes release award tickets closer to the departure date?

andrewwm

I'd say your odds aren't great as that flight is usually very full and it is heading into prime travel season. But, you never know.

More likely is that space will open up on the EWR-IST United non-stop. Depends on if you feel like that would be better than connecting in Geneva.

anandrg

Trying to get a saver Y award for SFO - CDG or FRA or FCO in June. Absolutely nothing in any *A carrier through .bomb. Do the experts think that any inventory will open up as we get closer or should I just bite the bullet and buy a ticket now before fares go even further up?

I really don't have much experience flying to europe in June so any advise on load factors and historical saver inventory is much appreciated.

LarkSFO

I have found amazing saver award availability on a recent search!

(caveat: to Albany NY and Hartford CT in November... )

Every school kid in America and their parents is looking for these same flights.

I hate to say this, but this is one of the flights you need to book at 331 days out if you want to get close to your desired flights / dates.

Start looking at connections, options from other UA airports. May be something out there. Have you considered an award booking service? Some of those guys have ideas I would never think of...

uastarflyer

What LarkSFO said

When I got award seats last summer UA chose my destination city in Europe and dates of departure and return for me. I was UA's b****. And I enjoyed it.

nor4

I'm sending my nephew to China this summer. So far I've used half my UA miles for the outbound, one-way DEN-CTU.
I've been looking for his return flight, about Aug 20-3 PVG-DEN. Since I only have enough miles for a saver economy award, I'm pretty restricted.

I put in a request in ExpertFlyer for all the one stops I could find PVG - NRT, LAX, SFO, ORD, and EWR but there has been no availability for a while.

Does anyone have an experience with finding seats back from China? Can I expect Saver seats to open up on any of these routes? Are there other routes that would be better to try?

Any help appreciated.

EmailKid

1) you don't have to restrict yourself to UA flights. Asiana serves quite a few airports in China.

2) it's been reported, and has been my experience, that when planes don't fill up, reward seats open up closer to departure. Depending on how you feel about waiting till one or two weeks out, seats may / probably will pop up, unless there's some king of a holiday.

3) one would think if your nephew is studying in China, must have some command of local language. In which case, look for flights from UA served gateways and buy a ticket to get there.

That's what I'd try @:-)

EmailKid

Muckus

Have you looked at SHA as the departure airport? that would be on Air China and route throguh PEK. Even if that leg doesnt work, domestic tickets in China are typically very cheap so you should try other possible cities for the departure. Of course, PEK is the major other option, but if you an find connections through Asiana (OZ) they fly out of Hangzhou (a short, cheap, train ride from Shanghai) and a lot of other Chinese cities. There is often also good availability out of Seoul. The one-way ticket PVG-ICN is more expensive, but worth checking.

nor4

Thanks for the tips. I looked at HGH and it looks like all those flights connect through ICN or PEK so I'll use them as my start point for some more searches.

Would it be useful to try using EF to see if there are any award seats that don't appear on UA's award search pages? I"m not sure how inclusive UA is.

I"ll try to get him a seat as early as possible since he'll be travelling and pretty unreachable for a couple of weeks before departure. He's not studying, just doing a poke-around trip.

But he's travelling with a friend who speaks Mandarin so I'll look into some other departure cities and see what's possible. Thanks for the tip.

PV_Premier

Thanks for the tip anc-ord772, this worked beautifully, at T-18 my EF alert went off for the one available I inventory seat on LAX-EWR for Friday AM, grabbed it and had a nice cozy ride in BF

barrima6

So I recently tried to book a couple of round trip flights for my niece and her husband between Newark (EWR) and Jacksonville, FL (JAX) using my miles a week or so ago. They wanted to fly on May 28 (about 8 weeks out at the time I began searching) and what do I find?? United wants to "charge" me 50,000 miles for each round trip ticket! On regional jets, no less. So after taking a day to decide whether I want to use the miles, I decide to do so and get back onto the website to book the travel. And what did they decide to in that 24 hours? The restrict the flights I can use my miles on to 6:00 am or earlier flights each way!

Suffice it to say my opinion of United's "mileage plus" is not very high. I mean, what a joke...what good is it having miles if you can't even use them on conveniently scheduled flights?? God I miss Continental...

Regards,

Manuel Barrios
United 1K Status Flyer

mgcsinc

Umm... if you have status, then the disappearance of those flight options means that the flights became completely booked in the economy cabin. Soooooo... yeah. The way airplanes work is that they can only fit so many people.

Good luck finding the mythical airline with infinity availability.

Devyan1

Welcome to FT...

The 25K per ticket is the standard domestic RT award, no matter how far you are flying so that is to be expected

Understand that opinions vary on Mileage PLus but this seems to be a complaint in vein

zrs70

Welcome to your first FT post. I see you are a 1K, yet your post has the feel of someone less experienced with mileage bookings. Was CO that much better?

rankourabu

I suggest Delta SkyMiles, they are well known for low-priced awards at convenient times