Using united.com to purchase LX ticket
 

Hi - I'm kind of new to this so can use some expert advice. I want to purchase a RT ticket from LAS to VIE (including LX TATL) via ORD/ZRH, which I can find and price easily on the LX website. The segments between LAS/ORD and return are on a UA codeshare. However, when I go to the UA website to duplicate, I cannot get it to appear. I narrow the departure times to match the offering on the LX website, make sure to uncheck "United Airlines Flights Only" and increase "Number of Flights to Display" to 50. No joy. Some LH flights show up, but no LX. Again, this is to purchase, not award travel. Assume I should just buy from LX? Thanks.

Could be that UA doesn't codeshare with LX on the ZRH-VIE leg, so that's why it doesn't show up on UA. You should be fine booking on LX and entering your MP number.

You could call in or book through an online travel agency, UA is fully capable of issuing a ticket with a flight marketed by LX in it even if they don't market a codeshare of it. The web site just isn't programmed to do it

You might also try entering your trip as a multi-city. The sliders and checkboxes you describe probably just filter the search results that they're already finding. A multi-city itinerary will send a different search expression to the fare search engine. If the multi-city includes flights one after each other it'll still produce the same connections and use the same fares as a connecting flight for a normal search.

Booking through LX will have the same problem getting the UA LAS-ORD flight to come up. On the other hand at least you'll know what fare class you're booked in on the LX flights. The fare class on the codeshares doesn't mean much.

A trick I once used to book an itinerary with partner flights (wanted to avoid UA # because I had the partner's upgrade voucher) was to use the award booking engine to get the desired itinerary, and then click the "purchase this reservation in economy" option. The problem is that all segments have to be available as award (any class, standard or saver), which may be tough for the ORD-ZRH leg.

Thanks for the ideas. I went back and tried duplicating individual legs on the ua site and eventually got the same itinerary - at more than double the LX price :p Will book on LX and put in the MP number.