cdegt

Another one has already finished his first two segments and landed at HKG about 16 hr ago.

ctownflyer

A DDF member has already flown and returned from HKG unscathed, booked from an account with just 1,000 miles in it.

Tiki

I don't have a dog in this fight but I am just wondering how this mistake could have happened in the first place? HKG is in the South Asia zone, China is in the North Asia zone so it wasn't a misprogramming of a zone award. Hong Kong uses HKD and China uses CNY so it's not the currency. It seems to me it has to be deliberate-someone at UA, maybe in the Chinese office wanted his family to get cheap tickets or something so he messed with the programming, then couldn't switch it back. Or a disgruntled employee who was made redundant could have done it on purpose. I just can't see how this could have been a real glitch to have that effect. A real glitch would have been leaving off a few decimal places or something.

Are there any computer experts here who can explain how this could have happened? Just curious!

Also, since this wasn't a "fire sale" or we all would have gotten emails to promote it, it seemed to have been spread by bloggers and on forums. The people spreading it were experienced enough to know that it was a glitch but kept urging people to hurry up and get in on it and "don't call the airline". Would they have some shared responsibility in the financial liability of UA if they honor these tickets?

What went viral on English language forums and blogs is probably only the tip of the iceberg, there must be thousands of Chinese language speakers who spread this around too.

cdegt

It was about HKG only, nothing to do with a specific country or region. No matter what your departure or destination city was, anything touches HKG went wrong. The glitch worked on either you fly from PEK or SFO to HKG, or via HKG to somewhere else.

nature1370

This could be that someone at UA purposely did something for this particular route to HongKong. If a software was error, the miles calculating engine would show errors for other routes. Why only happened for HKG route? It seems strange to me in the first place.

At this point, we are outsiders who do not know the details of what went wrong.

UrbaneGent

Truly unbelievable, I would have booked every single week-end for the next 52 weeks. If I didn't want to go, I would cancel, plain and simple. Leave Friday, come back Sunday. Back and forth.

I'm really happy for those who go in on this, I am just amazed. Simply amazed. I love LOVE it!

UG

So let me get this straight, ORD to HKG 4 miles F Class,
ORD to HKG to SYD 4 miles (on other airlines as well?) F Class
SFO to PEK/ or was it just from PEK to SFO?
SFO to HKG 4 miles F class
EWR to HKG 4 miles F class

1015-1k

I know youre probably exaggerating. But... As one who does the Asia routes every month or so, I can tell you that you would likely tire of that real fast. Leave Friday around noon, arriving Saturday afternoon, spend one night in HK, and fly out Sunday morning? Even in F class, you would quickly tire of the mediocre service, often grouchy attitudes, repeat food offerings, frequent mechanical delays, chances for swaps to old config aircraft, not to mention burning through the IFE selections in about a trip and a half.

Edit: I suppose partner airlines would be a step up, but still not worth it IMO.

rittenhousesq

I'm flying to SIN via HKG both ways and got the 4 mile deal.

OskiBear

^ to those who booked it and flew it.

I got in on the SQ awards which I was already pretty darn happy about.

But, this totally trumps that!

Given that UA has been sticking it to me for 50K mi that they incorrectly refuse to refund on a cancelled award, I'll look at this as karma coming back to bite them.

Congrats to all of you!

777boy

Looks like some website issues relating to this 4 mile award still exist. Here's what I see when I try to change dates (still same type of award - saver first - as I originally booked):
This is quite confusing. It pretty clearly says that the original ticket and the new ticket have the same cost both in miles (4) and dollars ($68.70). However, under price difference, it wants to charge me 139,996 more miles and refund me $4.20. Where did the $4.20 come from???

Also, for the record, I booked this off of a hold. So, at the time when I entered my credit card info for the taxes and clicked confirm, EVERYTHING that I saw said a charge of 4 miles. There was no mention of any other mileage amount.

SunBurntCountry

It is possible that the $4.20 refund is due to a change in the exchange rate.

WingedWorldExplorer

I have a screenshot of exactly that last booking page. Only 4 miles and $ 48.10 in taxes nothing else.

UrbaneGent

You guys are famous!

sonofzeus

An intern? Hope he/she is a paid intern.

tuppy

I've got a question about DoT regs if anyone can help. Do they have authority over UA tickets because point of sale is in the US or only if flights touchdown in the US? ie, will they treat tickets that never touch US soil differently? Mostly just curious as I'm doing ORD-HKG but wonder if there are any tickets where people don't land in the US.