caesar04

I've been flying US-China several times a year for five years now so I would like to think i have a pretty good understanding of the market. Recently however i noticed United is getting very creative:

- My colleague recently flew from Chicago to Hangzhou and United sold him a ticket ORD-HKG-HGH. This amazed me for a couple reasons: the last segment was on Dragonair which is in a competing alliance in a market where United has a strong(?) Star Alliance partner in Air China; it involves significant backtracking to the tune of 1400 miles vs a regular routing via Beijing or non-stop to Shanghai

- I currently hold a United ticket that includes a segment on an Air China code share operated by ANA(!?). Anyone want to venture a guess on how many miles that flight is going to earn? Hehehe...

Just sharing some observations...

Caesar

txflyer77

As far as the second one goes, if you can get either United or Air China to tell you the underlying fare code as far as ANA is concerned, it'd be pretty easy to figure out how many miles you'll earn on that segment.

I don't find either of these very surprising. I once looked up IAH-KIX on united.com and found IAH-NRT-KIX with the second segment flown by JL despite NH being a partner...

LausanneBoy

Well, KA is owned by CX which is partially owned by CA. Since CA and KA have interline agreement, UA might just be looking out for the best connection time/price for your friend...

ORDnHKG

Did you ever look up does NH fly NRT-KIX at all ?

I guess not as this route doesn't exist in NH's system ever !

It is either HND-KIX or NRT-ITM. They would never sell you HND-KIX as there is only 1 NH flight per day and it leaves in the morning, therefore in order for you to fly IAH-NRT and HND-KIX, you have to pay for that expensive NRT-HND limosine + hotel overnight !

Indelaware

Re: Travel via HKG: UA, and other airlines, have joint fares with a multitude of competitors that are not partners. And can also ticket back-to-back fares with any number of additonal airlines.
UA should sell a ticket on whatever routing the customer wants. It would be interesting if the routing mentioned was designed by a travel agent or if it was suggested by UA. It could be that it was selected based on better availability/lower fare on the ORD-HKG flight rather than ORD-BJS/PVG flight.

Re Codeshares: Sometimes the code share carrier has a needed class that the operating carrier doesn't. One should ticket by the least costly routing. I once had a six segment trip ticketed as
1.UA operated by CO
2.CO operated by UA
3.OS operated by LH
4.LX operated by OS
5.UA operated by AC
6.AC operated by UA.
A good agent tries every ticketing combination to find the lowest fare. I chuckeled seeing what was found, but didn't consider it intentionally creative on UAs part but rather as an unintended quirk. It was not so much creative, but smart, for my agent to find this.

Miles are always credited by operating airline.

AntonS

When you buy a ticket like ORD-HKG-XXX, where ORD-HKG is on UA and HKG-XXX is on another airline, it can priced as one of the following:

1. Single (through) fare from ORD to XXX on UA that allows to book HKG-XXX on a different airline.
2. END-TO-END, which is a combination of two different fares ORD-HKG on UA and HKG-XXX on another airline.

In case of single (through) fare UA can publish certain fares for ORD-HKG-XXX that include non-partner airlines, especially if partner flights do not exist on the market. If you look at the fare rules, it's all defined there. Which airlines, which booking classes, etc.

I've flown a number of flights on interesting through fares. A couple of years ago I was on CO fare flight PVR-IAH-LHR-MAD in heavily discount business (Z) where LHR-MAD was operater by BA. It was single CO fare from PVR to MAD at a very good price that allowed routing on BA. Another example was many years ago on a single UA fare SEA-IAD-CDG-LED with CDG-LED on Air France. Going back from LED to SEA, AF agent in LED aparently saw United ticket for the first time in her life (it was a paper ticket then) and did not know how to check my bags. I had to insist that they hand write baggage tags and it worked out well.

END-TO-END is another possibility. Some fares allow to be combined as END-TO-END, some not. Often, if end-to-end is allowed, it can be with any fare on any airline that also allows end-to-end, but sometimes it can be restricted to partners or certain airlines. It is also stated in the fare rules. Whether end-to-end is allowed or not depends on the market and fare. More expensive fares are more likely to allow end-to-end. Some markets with heavy competition like LHR, end-to-end is rarely allowed, because if you can combine two cheap fares XXX-LHR-YYY, airlines would not be able to sell XXX-YYY for more money. On the other hands, there are markes, where end-to-ends make more sence for the airlines if they give customers access to new destinations.


Edited to add:

Both "through" and "end-to-end" fares are sold as one single ticket to the customer and most people do not even know the difference. I've been on UA flights through UA hub that were auto-priced as end-to-end, because it was cheaper then existing through fares. You can also have combination of "through" and "end-to-end" fares on a singe ticket. When you search ticket on Expedia, Orbitz, etc. they want to try all combinations and give you the cheapest price. Even if you hand pick your flights in multi-city itinerary, it may be possble to combine fares in different ways and GDS should autoprice it the cheapest possble way.

Indelaware

AntonS -
My favorite was PHL-EWR-LHR-RAK/CMN-CAI-AMM-JFK/LGA-PHL
PHL-EWR-LHR on US operated by CO, LHR-RAK BA, CMN-CAI AT, CAI-AMM MS, AMM-JFK US operated by RJ, LGA-PHL on US. Fared as PHL-RAK/AMM-PHL as a US fare and CMN-CAI-AMM on a AT fare; all on the same ticket. And it was dirt cheap because the US Airways fare desk computed the taxes incorrectly.

dsquared37

It will earn exactly the number of miles flown.

Under this heading:

All flights earn 100%.

https://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/mar...spx?ItemId=299

chinatraderjmr

There are plenty of flights sold on .bomb which include code shares on BA, CX & even JL. I just looked at a NYC-ARN flight in C for Nov & the first choice was EWR-FRA-ARN on UA/LH. moving down, the 5th choice was EWR-LHR (UA) conx to LHR-ARN (BA)

Alliances are there to maximize profits but almost any airline can & will issue tkts/segments on other carriers. (I had a trip a few months ago (issued by SQ) that involved 7 flights, 5 airlines (UA,EK,9W,CX,SQ). UA&SQ were the only *A flights, CX is part of OW, 9W is a "partner" but not *A and EK has no Alliance. Nothing strange about this.

UA also still has a RTW fare w CX (as well as one w EK)

Passmethesickbag

CO used to use the Dragonair lounge at HKG. Very nice it was, too!

1kBill

I've flown HKG-HGH quite a bit and IIRC, CA does not actually fly the route but code shares on KA.

Well, IMO, it's nicer than the lounge opposite (CNAC?), but give me a CX lounge any day.