vrichard

Went online to check my reservations as I am doing daily now with all the mess....

I had made award travel reservation online on Asiana a few days ago, and received the confirmation and ticket number from United by email.

This morning, the reservation is no longer there.
I click the 'Inactive' tab, and it's there as CANCELLED!

I call 1k line. 30 mins later I'm told, sorry, our system didn't give Asiana the ticket number, so they cancelled the reservation after holding it for 3 days, we tried to get the seat back, but Asiana won't give it to us even though they see that you had the reservation. (The flight in question has C9 D9 availability.)

The only thing United will do is give me a seat on UA with different routing.
Unacceptable.

I am in state of shock.

(I had a second reservation on Asiana that I made at the same time, so I asked agent to check on that - after another long wait, she came back on the line and said they gave Asiana the ticket number so now it won't be cancelled. She told me that there is TECHNICAL ISSUE AT UNITED and none of the ticket numbers are getting to Asiana, and that probably this second reservation would have been cancelled by Asiana later today because they didn't have the ticket number on that one either.)

colpuck

OZ has the world's wost IT system, so it's really no surprise. After I made my reservation I called OZ to make sure it was ok, when I found out it wasn't I had to have UA call OZ to straighten them out.

There have been numerous threads on this issue.

My policy has always been to call the partner airlines and make sure everything is ok when I book a partner award.

bob_the_d

+1.

it sucks it happened to the OP and i don't blame the OP either, but i guess it's something to keep in mind going forward. i would use that as a general rule no matter which airline and which network i'm flying. if i don't get a confirmation, i'm never 100% comfortable.

vrichard

I got a confirmation and a ticket number from United.
So, confirmation and ticket number is not enough.

I called Asiana, they can see the ticket, they can see the record (I have their record locator), but they can't link the two.

colpuck

Not with OZ, no. Call UA and have them get on the horn with OZ and see if they can straighten them out.

allinone

With the brilliant move of combining the 2 carriers, this has happened with regular tickets as well. I am a travel agent and have had clients get stuck at the airport with UA saying a reservation wasn't ticketed. It is clearly ticketed with date, ticket number, confirmation number -anything you could possibly ask for. Last time it took UA 90 minutes to find the reservation. Luckily, the gentleman had plenty of time to catch his flight. Sounds like a similar problem here - the computers didn't "talk" to one another - and UA messes up once again.

Flyingfox

At least you didn't get half way round the world, show up for your flight, and THEN have them tell you they cannot find your "segment" with them (despite your wife being on the same itenerary and having the same flight).

So she got her award ticket segment and got to board.

I got to board too, but I HAD TO PURCHASE that segment, and I got to pay full fare business. It was the only segment out of 8 that had "just vanished".

And this was an award ticket done 6 months previous.

I really avoid them whenever possible.

colpuck

Drama, this is a confirmed problem with the OZ system that existed BEFORE the merger. There are plenty of "merger is a failure" threads to vent your spleen in. This is not one of them.

Pat89339

To the OP and others who have responded, except for the post above, thank you! This is an important piece of information to have for those of us who aren't aware yet of all of the many problems with the CO system that we are now forced to use.

The former PMCO folks would do a service to everyone unfamiliar with this system we are now using to develop a list of all of these "confirmed problems" we have to deal with now. If such a list already exists, a link would be helpful rather than to state to everyone that we should all know this. If the list doesn't exist, here is the first one.

1. There is a technical issue with UA. If you book award travel on OZ, you need to babysit the reservation to make sure that UA sends the ticket to OZ or your reservation may be cancelled.

UA-NYC

Add "all other *A carriers" to the list as well - OZ may be particularly troublesome, but the lack of instant ticketing can easily affect any carrier

c1mth0g

Not only do I call the other carrier, I specifically ask them if the reservation has been ticketed.

colpuck

Drama, this is a confirmed problem with the OZ system that existed BEFORE the merger, IE before the change to SHARES. This has nothing to do with UA but with OZ's IT failure. There are plenty of "merger is a failure" threads to vent your spleen in. This is not one of them.

UA-NYC

Must be a PMCO (and now COdbaUA) problem - no issues on my past OZ award tix.

Just add it to the list...

vrichard

If you aren't already working for the new UA, you probably should. You have the [new to pmUA] right attitude.

I have booked many award travel flights pmUA on partners including SQ, OZ, TG and NH and NEVER had this problem. In fact, I booked an OZ award flight on the CO website prior to system integration, and it ticketed and I flew it without any issue.

Now, what goes on behind the scenes is likely speculation --- maybe a real person has to do something manual at UA to get the ticket info to OZ - I don't really know, and I shouldn't have to care. Maybe before 3/3 they had time to do these things [most of the time?]. I don't really know, and I shouldn't have to.

But, to say that the problem is not UA's that it's OZ because they have the worst IT -- wow! What a perfect attitude for this new environment. You are hired.

By the way, I had also booked pre-system-integration CO-operated flight HNL-IAH connecting to AC codeshare. There was NO WAY to get a seat assignment. CO would say to me, we can request a seat, AC has to issue it. I called AC and they told me that it was a CO problem - the CO system wouldn't talk to the AC system. AC can't assign a seat, CO has to, but the systems don't talk correctly. AC told me if it was a UNITED-issued ticket (this is pre-integration), there would be no problem to select a seat. I will save you the trouble: colpuck says: DRAMA - this is a confirmed problem with the AC system that existed BEFORE the merger and has nothing to do with [UA/CO].

colpuck

As I said above there are several threads on the inability for OZ to process tickets. The only problems have been OZ's end. I've personally had problems with OZ's system so go figure.