Yes, this is a good thing to keep in mind. If the OP wants to use this strategy, he/she should review and understand the change fees before booking anything.

This matches my experience. I've been checking the UA site to plan a trip of my own over the last couple of days and have seen huge numbers of LH F seats coming online within 1-3 days of departure (the lower the number of open seats on a flight, the closer to departure they open up for UA award booking).

I'd book the trip in business or whatever and then monitor availability at T-14, T-7, and every day after that. Seems like you're usually able to get at least one F seat each day to FRA or MUC at the last minute based solely on what I've seen in the last week or so. Connecting flights from Germany to wherever you want to go in europe seem plentiful at the last minute as well.

Thanks for all the info. I am now looking for Business class seats that I can book now and then hopefully change. I was even willing to fly from NYC to Chicago and then on to Germany, just to fly LH first. There actually was availability on United but I would rather stay home than have a experience that is not worthy of all my hard work to get these points.

The ANA tool do you need points on the account to see star alliance availability?

I may also just go an book on BA and fly JFK-BOS-FRA and be in First for the overseas portion.

The change fee is so small compared to using miles on AA or BA fuel surcharges and Taxes.

No need for points. You just need an ANA FF account. There is a trick to seeing Partner inventory without miles. You have to 1st try a route that ANA flies. Then you can change to search any route and specify a *A partner.

For an east coast departure, lots of options from EWR and JFK to FRA/MUC. Also try IAD. Usually good avails, plus LH operates the new 748 to/from FRA.

Domestic MS flights also have this problem. Stopped using UA for some partners.

We just went through the same exercise, following up first with the 1K Line, then with a very friendly and helpful Web Support agent in India who spent a lot of time trying to book it before giving up himself.

He said he would report it so I'm sure we can expect it all to be resolved within the next couple of days. :p

We do have C seats booked already and will try to snag F seats at T-14 as suggested above. ^

I've been seeing multiple ghost LH flights for travel next week. Yesterday, I attempted to book SAN-SFO-FRA-XXX for my husband, with SFO-FRA on LH F. First, I booked it online and got all the way to the payment screen when it hiccuped. Then, I called and the agent couldn't see it. She did see SFO-FRA in C which was NOT shown on united.com.

Frustrating.

Trouble with a UA/LH award tix--anyone else?
 

Hey all. I have the following outbound booked on a UA First Class saver award:

IAD-MUC LH415 BIZ 9:55p-12:55p
MUC-BKK TG First 925 9:50p-2:25p
BKK-USM TG 287 3:20p-4:25p

When I booked, the on line system defaulted to lousy flights through London (old TG aircraft) and I managed to get this itinerary by IDing avail flights and calling.

I have closely monitoring the first flight on Lufthansa LH 415 to see if first comes open in a saver award. I do this by going to the UA site and searching just that flight--not the whole itinerary. Today it came open and still shows that flight as available in first saver. When I call to have then up-adjust the ticket from biz to first, United is saying that it is unavailable. I called back and they did not even see in the inventory when they searched the flight by itself. I escalated to a supervisor who said that they cannot change a flight in a complex itinerary based on one leg that is avail on the net--it must be avail within the whole flight plan. It sounded like a runaround, but it is odd that I see the availability when looking but they do not.

Anyone have any suggestions? Seems that if I can tell them what to do or how to do it the UA 1k ops are happy to try, but left to their own devices they default to "cannot be done."

Seems so close (every time I look, the availability stares right back at me) but so far away.

Thanks for any help or advise.

there have been recent issues with online phantom LH availablity
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ity-again.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...-recently.html

Yep, read those. Just talked to another GS agent who said that the inventory did not show up in her system and that another caller had the same issue. That guy tried to go through the full booking on the UA site but at the end it said it was unable to confirm. I went through the steps but did not complete the booking so will never know if that was the same case. Guess I'll just keep calling back and maybe will get lucky.

The biz on the late flt out of IAD is pretty good. Just flew it last night. F would be better but not end of world. It's really the LH lounge in MUC that makes the diff. TG has to use the SA gold lounge. Not bad, but not good for 7 hours.

Just dealt with these ghost bookings today... No resolution. Lots of flights show up on LH in F, on the website. But the agents can't see them! I was connected to web support and they said that it just hadn't updated today. I told her that the awards have been showing for days! She didn't seem to care.
Typical!
:mad:

It's super frustrating. I have talked with multi-GS agents and a supervisor and no one really seems to care. But they do tell me to call back everyday and check again!

Yeah, I got the same advice from them.

Having the same exact problem today with the clueless out-sourced staff! I was transferred to web support and then to a supervisor. Supervisor asked me to email screen image. But system showed only economy avail and First LH unavailable. I was looking forward to a nice long layover in the FCT! GRRRRR!

PLUS surprised not available, F completely empty and flight is 3 weeks out......!!!