o mikros

The system has gotten better about eventually ticketing, even when things don't go through immediately.

But what are you planning to follow up with the other airlines about? If I were you, I wouldn't mess with it. You can PM me if you want my more detailed reasons.

jsloan

Just to ensure that they have the 016 ticket number in their system, so their record won't be auto-cancelled for nonpayment. I was actually able to verify that online while choosing seats, so I don't need any further follow-up. I've been burned by showing up at the airport, expecting to board a flight, only to find that the operating carrier didn't have a record of it. In my case, they were able to reinstate it (after about 20 minutes of work), but I would have been in a bad situation if they hadn't had inventory. Lesson learned.

wizbang_fl

What you forgot to mention is WHEN you placed the reservation. Airlines rotate fares overnight, generally at midnight where their HBO is located. So if you put in the booked at 11:30pm Central it's a good chance that the booking failed due to a fare change. Airlines don't guarantee bookings until they are ticketed. When you made the reservation you would have been issued a locator. You can use the same locator to pull up the booking to see if it has ticketed yet. If it hasn't and the fare changed it should display that the fare has increased and the fare available with the option to accept the fare. This is more frequent an issue when the flight is within 72 hours as available seats can often sell quickly and the airlines all have the disclaimer that the fare and availability are not "guaranteed" until ticketed. I know it stinks but it's the way they do a CYA if a GDS allows something to process that they don't have inventory for.

Toronto1970

Ugh. I'm having a similar issue. Purchased two tickets yesterday priced in CDN. (Canadian resident / credit card. Partial payment using $400USD ETCs). Wanted them to actually ticket so I can apply GPUs and grab available R space.

Has been sitting in the ticketing queue for more than 12 hours. I've called and they say everything is fine and just wait. Of course, I'm constantly checking R availability to make sure it doesn't disappear and kill all of the plans! Complicating things is that we have a friend whose purchase did go through immediately (since he wasn't using an ETC) and we were able to grab R space for him. But if we can't get ours confirmed then we would want to cancel his ticket. Which means we need to know in less than 12 hours so his can be cancelled.

Does anyone know any "magic words" to tell an agent to get this pushed to the top of the queue?

laxmillenial

Try changing your seats. That's worked for me a couple times (could be coincidence, but I don't know). Once I changed seats, accepted the new seats, then went back into Manage reservations, it was ticketed.
If that doesn't work, have you tried calling them and explaining the R space? Saying you want to grab the space right now using your GPU's could help push some urgency into the agents.

Toronto1970

Thanks for the suggestion, but alas changing seats didn't seem to work for me. And both the 1K desk (yes, I know it's not a separate desk) and the Twitter team told me that I had no choice but to wait it out :-(

cfischer

they should be able to apply the GPU though ...

Toronto1970

RobOnLI

Don't expect a fight. Don't even waste your time. If "R" space is gone by the time your flights ticket you are S.O.L. Sorry United doesn't care that "R" space was open at the time you booked the flights . They will only look at "R" space when you apply the upgrade. You'll go on the waitlist and be prioritized with everyone else. I'm hopeful "R" does remain open for your upgrades to clear. 26+ hours to issue a ticket is ridiculous.

-RM

Toronto1970

Success! I decided to give the 1K desk another call before going to bed, and finally got someone who was on the ball. She didn't know why it wouldn't ticket, but she understood the urgency of R space and found someone in the right department to push it through. She then spent about 30 minutes processing the GPUs, because the system kept errorring out and she had to do "each segment manually" (whatever that meant). So something was definitely funky with the reservation.

Anyway, the moral of the story is (as always) HUACA!

Acornragazzo

After reading all of your experiences I would like to ask for some advice. Last night I booked CGN-LHR-BKK-PER and SYD-BKK-VIE-CGN with miles on .bomb traveling on EW and TG. I got an e-mail saying the reservation is processing and will get an email when it is ticketed and I also received a PNR number for EW and TG. Around 12 hours after the reservation, knowing that it was not ticketed I figured it couldn't hurt to at least check what EW and TG had to say about the PNR. EW's website shows their flights and says not ticketed. So far so good. However, when I checked the TG website it showed all segments (including EW) except LHR-BKK. Should I be worried? I figured if it hasn't ticketed by ~23 hours I should call the MPSC and ask them to ticket. Is there anything else I can/should do?

Thanks for the help!

Acornragazzo

Update:

After about 15 hours the reservation has ticketed. UA sent me a ticket confirmation with PNR for EW and TG. However when I look up my reservation on the TG website LHR - BKK and BKK - VIE are missing. I just tried to call reservations and couldn't get through to anyone. I will try again later.

Update 2:
After spending an hour on the phone with a very helpful person the flights were rebooked on LH/TG/TK. LH/TG now show all segments confirmed, but TK won't show the reservation since it was not booked through them. Is this something I should worry about?

cfischer

get the TK PNR. This should pull it up. Get the PNR from the app as/if needed.

Acornragazzo

That's what I did. I also tried with the ticket number. Both on the TK website and App. This is what TK website says:

jsloan

Call TK. They can pull up the reservation with your PNR or your name and date of travel. Ask them to verify that it's ticketed properly. Give them the ticket number from your UA receipt for comparison purposes.