How To Book International Awards W/ United Miles When There Is No Availability.
 

I'm not sure if everyone knows this but you can add on a free domestic positioning flight on International Award flights booked with United miles.

Basically if you can't find any saver availability from your home airport, you can fly out of any other U.S airport with availability and United will fly you to that airport for free (as long as there is domestic availability).

This is really useful if you have set in stone dates and United.com is saying there is no saver availability from your home airport.

For anyone that is interested, I put together a step by step guide.

How To Book International Awards W/ United Miles When There Is No Availability.
 

Unless I have missed your point, I would have thought this was 'basic' knowledge - but it might be helpful to some.

VERY helpful to me - this wasn't something I knew!

Thanks onesweetworld! ^ :D

Thanks for pointing this out. Do the domestic positioning flights automatically ticket in coach, or can they ticket in first if your award is in biz/first?

Thanks also for linking to MileValue's post on the free one-ways at the beginning/end of overseas trips!

Not to hijack the thread, but has anyone had experience combining two one-way award bookings into a single round-trip (e.g. in order to gain a stopover)?

Hmm.. I never knew that, either. I am not a super frequent flier, but I have been a 1P for a few years. Good info, thank you for posting!

Many thanks,---very useful info.

Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor...

Let me get this straight - even if there is no domestic award availability, they will add it on at no charge for an international award flight?

You mean I didn't need to overnight in Houston last year because there was no IAH-ATL availability after my international leg? How did I miss this?

EDIT: I read the article, and this is not the case. Award availability is still needed on the domestic portion. Still a good tip, but not as earth shattering as I thought.

The issue in OP's case was not that ORD-IAH wasn't available, but that united.com couldn't find the ORD-IAH-DOH-BOM routing for your ORD-BOM query (perhaps because IAH is not considered as a normal connecting city for ORD-BOM), so you had to find it manually and call UA to book it. Per UA's award chart, the number of miles is the same for the same region pair regardless of the number of segments or total distance (maybe there are limits but they are practically irrelevant for most people).

Actually I had a couple of such experiences (being able to add a domestic segment when saver award is not available) when I called UA to change the route.

Say I've originally booked MUC-ORD-PIT but there is a MUC-IAD flight I really want to take (such as LH F) and is available, but I see no saver award availability on IAD-PIT. I then check revenue o/w fare for IAD-PIT and it turns out to be reasonable, so I call UA thinking that I could just purchase a separate ticket for that segment. I tell the agent I want to take those two flights, expecting to be told that IAD-PIT is not available. Surprisingly, however, the agent books both segments without a hitch.

In my case, the IAD-PIT segment booked into XN, which is coach saver award for elites so it should have shown up when I searched for IAD-PIT. There is a slight chance that I forgot to log in and only XN was >0, but I have another similar experience and I usually make sure that I'm logged in when I do award search.

Has anyone had similar experience?

I have already booked a standard biz award ticket, roundtrip EWR to HKG on the direct flight for 300K miles.

Any chance of using the above info and changing this if I find a saverpass award, say HKG to SFO or something in biz?

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Is this any different from checking award availability segment by segment? Or is there a special exception made to the positioning flight (i.e. domestic award availability not available).

Does this also have anything to do with married segments?

This.

OP, thank you for the helpful contribution! However, to ensure that nobody gets confused, this is a very basic fact about award redemptions -- for all airlines. The OP is basically observing that award tickets (just like purchased tix) do not need to be nonstop -- e.g., you can fly ORD-EWR-LHR rather than being limited to ORD-LHR nonstop.

This is fairly obvious to those of us who live in non-hub cities and are used to flying routes like FAI-DEN-IAD-CDG-VIE to get places. However, flyers who are lucky enough to live in a hub and get more or less everywhere nonstop may indeed find it useful. I suspect most FTers have moved on to more complicated challenges like trying to maximize the number of 23-hour layovers on a four-partner double-open-jaw to Asia with stopover in Europe.

One observation that may be useful to those who appreciated the original post is that routing rules on award tix are often much looser, in terms of connecting cities, than those on paid fares. For example, the routing that I mentioned above (to VIE via CDG) is not generally legal on paid fares, because CDG is not a hub. But for an award routing, you can connect (and have a stopover!) almost anywhere as long as it doesn't involve backtracking.

The award booking FAQs always mention that award searches are not comprehensive. In other words, can't just put in the origin and destination and expect the award search to find all possible routes. Instead, you have to try several gateway cities to find award availability for the long overwater segment, and then work back from there. (In pmUA's case, I would typically search from SFO, LAX, ORD, and IAD; now I have to add EWR and IAH.)

Recently, I was able to book the overwater portions of an award online (SFO-SYD-MEL and AKL-PVG-SFO), then call UA to add the award segments that I wasn't able to book online (MEL-CHC and CHC-AKL). This routing wouldn't have shown up if I had only searched for SFO-MEL, MEL-CHC, and CHC-SFO.

So far, I don't see anything different here. Or am I missing something?

No, you're not missing anything. It costs the same number of miles to fly SEA-FRA as it does SEA-ORD-FRA or SEA-IAH-FRA. So what the OP is describing as a "free positioning flight" is actually just a regular domestic connection that most people have to take every time they book an international award...it would display as one of the options when searching for an award ticket. There has to be award space available on the domestic and international segments. Nothing to see here.

And to top it all off "Free" is misleading.. for someone who isn't a Plat or 1K..adding a connecting domestic flight would not be free at all if done 24 hours + past booking because it would alter the origin/destination and there would be a change fee.

Not relevant to UA forum, but there are quite a few exceptions to this. I know at least NH and BA implement distance-based award chart, where your mileage cost may increase as you add segments.

No kidding!

I have yet to figure out how to get the .bomb do this online...

The thread title does get me excited for a few seconds though... Then I realize it is just basically how things work anyway... And this is not anything "free" by any stretch!

Yes, thread title is very confusing. Looks as if you are getting something for nothing, and this just isn't the case. You often have to piece together segments for award flights for reasons already stated.

Indeed, for me there is no such thing as an international award without a "positioning flight" unless I drive several hours to ORD, DTW, etc! I didn't know that anyone out there thought you had to start an award only from an international gateway.

"reposition" is a bit of fancy wording for an indirect routing / added segment.

But yes, the domestic segments of a premium cabin international trip can be in domestic first.

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As others are stating -- this is essentially that AAA-CCC flights can be book as AAA-BBB-CCC for no additional airline miles in most cases (such as where AAA & BBB are domestic airports) if saver inventory is available for all segments.

Note this is not true for programs that miles are based on flight cost (like the Capital One credit card) but does work for most airline programs.

This is basic Airline Mile 101 -- but a nice FT post my OP to hype their blog site (and drive some visit traffic for ads).

Mea culpa -- you are, of course, quite right. I shouldn't have said "all"! There may be other programs where things are even more limited. UA actually has some of the most liberal rule sets out there, when you factor in the fact that *A partners can be mixed in without restriction (compare, e.g., to AS, which has a very nice partner list but only allows one partner on an award).

The OP is not talking about 24 hours...just talking about postioning one to take advantage of a "Free Ride".

Yes. It will cost you the award change fee, but they stopped charging redeposit fees when changing award category

I notice the OP in their blog post recommended booking trips as two one-ways. This is a bad idea for several reasons. First, open-jaws and stopovers can be booked on one ticket. And if you have little or no status, you'll end up paying double the fees if you need to make changes later.

I wrote a comment on the site explaining just this, about 15 hours ago. It was either never approved or it was deleted. :td:

This is the first message in this thread that makes sense to me.

Wow, 24 messages for such a simple topic?

Of course you can book segments *if saver inventory is available* - somehow you're the first person who actually mentioned this clearly. The OP made is sound like some kind of magic was happening. No. If inventory is available you can book it. If inventory is not available, then you can't book it. Until now, I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what great secret I've been missing out on all these years.

Nothing to see here. Move right along ... :p