username

That reminds me...

I got some very frustrating run around and rude agents the other day with a ticketing problem.

I booked 3 reservation:

#1 - got error on united.com but PNR created - no e-mail at all, not ticketed
#2 - ticketed fine, got both e-mails
#3 - ticketed fine, got both e-mails

Called the 1K line and routed to united.com Support who said the ticketing was stuck with credit card company and she could not do anything. I told her that did not make sense but she refused to do anything.

Called back to a 1K agent who said the ticketing is based on time of travel and they have ticketed thousands of reservations and there are many in front of me. I told him it did not make sense since #2 and #3 are both for later travel and have ticketed:

He said: "You know your job and I know my job, don't tell me what to do."
I said: "Well, I used to work on SHARES."
He said: "Why don't you come here and ticket it yourself?"

so I gave him an earful. He put me on hold, ticketed it and told me the delay was not a credit card company issue.

So, it is bad that things don't work sometimes and they don't seem to be very helpful.

TObject

Thank you. Just as you said. The booking was ticketed the next day.

swiftaw

Mine finally ticketed about 6 hours after I made the reservation.

NoStressHere

Did an award flight via AirCanada last week with miles. Flight is on UA with UA metal. For two days it said not ticketed - will hold until the CURRENT day until midnight. Sometime around the 3rd it appeared to have been ticketed. All is fine now. Had to call UA to get the UA PNR for seats

GoAmtrak

This thread has been pretty quiet lately, but I think I'm in a "partner Twilight Zone" situation. Booked an award ticket over the weekend, that, in its entirety, is 3 segments on AC (allowing two <24-hour layovers without a fare break on the 12.5K).

After 36 hours, it still didn't ticket. I called in and was told a few different stories about why my ticket's not valid, finally ending up with a supervisor who identified the reason being that the final segment no longer exists in AC's schedule (despite it still being for sale on AC's site and in the GDS, and my held booking showing as HK status on AC). Curiously, she said after checking with AC that the flight was being replaced with one 15 minutes later; sure enough, both are currently for revenue sale but only the "bad" one has award space.

She offered to rebook us on the next AC flight with award space. Nope, that was 1 week later, with no ability to open up award space on earlier AC flights. Next up, rebook us on connecting UA flights (yes, able to open up award space). But nope, it was a fare break and she followed the computer which demanded an extra 10K miles.

At that point, after 80 minutes on the phone, I asked her to simply cancel the booking, which she did. Lo and behold, the exact same 3 flights were once again available as a single award on UA.bomb. Of course I went and booked it again, once again showing as HK in AC's system for all segments.

I'm thinking this time I'll let the held booking sit for as many days as needed to sweat out the schedule change becoming official (trip isn't for several months). Should I expect that the final (supposedly slated for deletion) segment will automatically roll over to the new flight 15 minutes later? Or should I expect to be in the exact same situation and SOL if there's no award inventory on the new flight? I no longer have *A status, so I know not to expect anything beyond agents rote abiding by the computer.

weirdlyndon

You may want to be proactive about this and enlist United to have this reservation sent to their Alliance support desk. Someone at United who can work directly on this with AC for a desirable solution, as opposed to hoping for a successful outcome. Most supervisors will know what you're talking about when you mention a Star Alliance Liaison, since these things do happen. Not too often, but they do happen.

GoAmtrak

Thanks... I ended up calling 3 more times, finally landing on a US-based agent who was willing to get creative instead of insisting that rerouting me on UA was the only possibility. (Though, he did suggest that first until I politely reminded him that this could probably be fixed through coordination with the operating partner). He ended up directly dialing AC and persuading them to "soft sell-in" to the new flight number. Glad to be ticketed now. FT advice and HUACA wins again. ^

weirdlyndon

Nice! Glad it worked out and you got the flight you wanted!!

Microwave

I just reserved LHR-ICN and back for July in paid business, and it looks like the OS ticket hasn't yet been issued. It's been over 12 hours. What's the received wisdom on this? Should I call just before the 24 hour mark to ensure I retain the ability to junk the entire booking in case the ticket isn't forthcoming, or should I call after the 24 hours? I don't mind it taking a while, I just want to ensure I pay the fare I've agreed already and not a higher one.

RobOnLI

I'm assuming you booked this through United.com? Then OS isn't going to ticket anything; United will. But United needs 24 hours to confirm partner availability. You should call United before the 24 hour mark is up from when you clicked "purchase" on the website and ask them to ticket the reservation. As long as OS hasn't declined the space then UA can ticket it and all is good.

You can call sooner than 24 hours but many phone agents want you to wait the full 24 hours before ticketing the flights. If United tickets it before OS has the ability to deny the reservation then United is on the hook to transport you.

You should have seen a warning/banner at the top of the confirmation page telling you that it will take 24 hours to ticket the reservation because United has to confirm the space with Asiana. Typically this happens automatically when booked online but I like to call around the 24 hour mark and get it resolved so I can rest easier knowing it's confirmed.

-RM

Microwave

Thank you for the swift response, much appreciated. You are correct, booked via united.com—I should have mentioned that.

OK, so call just before the 24 hour mark, and if the phone agent refuses to push it through then I can try again after 24 hours, and if an issue is encountered at that time then I will still have the opportunity to cancel the entire booking if OS have declined the space even though 24 hours have passed? I just want to be sure there isn't any chance I'm stuck with the itinerary without every flight I wanted to buy, or at a price different than the one to which I agreed during booking.

RobOnLI

Yes, if UA won't ticket it before 24 hours then the fare will still be honored if you call in after the 24 hour window to ticket it because you had to wait for the partner to confirm availability. No worries there. You'll be fine.

-RM

Microwave

Was slammed last night so called first thing this morning... Passed on to web support, who had me on hold for ~15 minutes and came back saying the inventory doesn't exist, even though she sees it and I do too. Agent kept trying to say we'd have to look for other flights, but having done the research these were the only flights that would work with my schedule (I had to leave Seoul late, which is hard to do when flying back to Europe). Eventually I just told her to cancel the booking, then called up Lufthansa and booked it over the phone with them—the LH website wouldn't show me the late options unless I used a multi-city search and searched for the connection I needed specifically, and when I did that it threw an error saying the route can't be booked online. LH phone agent had it reserved in ~10 minutes all told, and e-ticket received less than an hour later. I'll earn slightly fewer miles as this is a P fare and would have done better at 11 miles per USD, but I wasn't ready to risk losing the itinerary again.

Lesson learnt I suppose... I'm sure I'll have more to learn.

jsloan

So, I made an award reservation around 22 hours ago; TG O / SQ I / NH I + X, where the NH flight is an international segment in I followed by a domestic intra-Japan flight more than 4 months out. Unsurprisingly, the agent had to get it priced manually, but she finally came back with the correct quote. (This particular routing would have been the same price under the old or the new system, as the SQ segment meets both the old stopover rule and the new Excursionist Perk rule).

I've got the dreaded message: "Thank you for choosing United Airlines. Your purchase is confirmed. You will be promptly notified once the internal processing of your reservation has been finalized so that you can request additional receipts, export to Microsoft Outlook, check-in, cancel, or email or print your itinerary." I haven't received an email from them -- even the itinerary email -- and clearly it's not ticketed.

The Amadeus confirmation number that's listed pulls up the reservation successfully on TG, SQ, and NH's website, and they all list the flights as confirmed. Still, I'm not confident that it's going to ticket. My question is -- assuming that it doesn't, what's the best way for me to figure out which flight is causing problems? Here's what I'm thinking:

1. The first flight is no longer showing as available in O on United.com or ExpertFlyer
2. SQ is always a crapshoot
3. While NH will sell domestic flights more than 4 months before departure when connected to an international itinerary, they won't sell standalone segments; maybe their system is confused.

So, I can legitimately point the finger at any of the three carriers. Any suggestions on how to find out which? If I call UA, will they be able to tell me which airline(s) confirmed the space and which did not?

Thanks in advance.

jsloan

I called at T+6h and got a clueless agent who was nonetheless willing to ask her supervisor to ticket the reservation. The supervisor attempted to ticket it, said that it came back "rejected," and advised that I give it another couple of days.

Of course, I knew that *A rules require confirmation within 24 hours, but i said thank you and hung up. I was busy at T+23/T+24, but I called at ~T+30. I got another agent who passed me off to MPSC, who then wanted to pass me back to reservations (?). Eventually a supervisor got involved; I spent about half an hour on hold, and the MPSC agent came back online to say that they were ticketing it, still had some work to do, and that they'd do it that evening and send me the email receipt.

Amazingly, that actually turned out to be true. It ticketed about an hour later and I got the confirmation email. I intend to follow up with the individual airlines, but I just wanted to report that all may not be lost if the reservation doesn't ticket immediately.