oliver0118

I know there are already several threads related to the infant ticket for the international award tickets, just think this one is a little bit different. So I put it in a thread. Please feel free to merge it.

Currently united.com allows users to book international award tickets with infant. I successfully booked one before online (EWR-NRT-PEK). But this time, I tried to book a new one(EWR-ORD-PEK). The website allows me to finish the transaction, my credit card was charged, but didn't receive the confirmation within 2 hours. So I called the customer service, was told that the infant ticket had to be issued in a different reservation. So she cancelled my reservation and booked the adults' ticket first, and added an infant separately, which has a different confirmation number.

The adults' ticketed were confirmed momentarily, but after 12 hours, I haven't seen the confirmation for the infant one, and the infant hasnt showed up under my revervation, as was discussed several times here...

I was wondering why the infant ticket can't be booked within the same reservation of the adults as my previous experience. Is it always the case or I was misinformed?

Thanks in advance!

kkg

I haven't used united.com to get an infant award ticket. I did that over the phone a couple of days ago. Ticket was issued about 20 hours later, and yes, the infant is on a different reservation.

oliver0118

Thanks for sharing your experience. May I ask how many days before your departure did the ticket get confirmed? (I called just now, and was told that the infant ticket usually get confirmed only a couple of days before the departure)... Does the baby show in you reservation after the confirmation?

Thanks.

IAATM

My bet is that you're in trouble, based on a similar experience that I had with a UA reward ticket for my child last year.

Did you get a record locator from the telephone agent for the infant's ticket? Did you try usign that to pull up the child's res online?

Alternatively, if you go into your account, and pull up your receipt, there's usually a pull-down at the top which allows you to display your reservation or your child's reservation. Try doing that and see if your child has his/her own 13-digit ticket number. If yes, then you're golden. If not, then you're in trouble - and you should call back, explain the problem, and do NOT hang up until you and your child both have separate and distinct 13-digit ticket numbers.

Feel free to send me a PM if you want to have an off-line discussion about this.

kkg

The phone agent told me about the same thing when I called (it won't get ticketed until right before the departure), but I received an email showing a new ticket number about 20 hours later.

oliver0118

Thanks! I think I'll wait a couple of hours and call again to make sure...

oliver0118

I got a reservation(confirmation) number from the phone call. But when I tried to pull the reservation, I got "Your itinerary cannot be retrieved, since there are no flight segments. Only itineraries with flight segments can be added to your Profile. If you require assistance, please contact United Reservations." as many have complained before...

I couldn't find any information about the child in the reservation or the receipt. Would you mind sharing your experience?

Thanks!

HerbFlyer

Based upon our experience last year, in a similar but slightly different situation, we purchased two international tickets and paid lap fee for infant. The adult tickets were automatically ticketed (within an hour or two), but the infant was on a separate record. We were told that it had to be manually processed, but once it was they would move the infant onto our tickets/records. It sounded weird but was apparently a limitation of the computer system? About two weeks later the separate "temporary" record for our son disappeared, and he was on our ticket. We booked these flights 3 months before travel so perhaps they prioritized work based upon date of travel?

We did redeem some international award travel at the same time for the three of us, and those were all done on the same record...

oliver0118

Good to hear that. Maybe I need a little more patience. Thanks so much for sharing your story!

Could you tell me the price for the infant ticket? Was it based on the one on the day you booked your ticket or on the day it was ticketed?

wwu123

I did book international award ticket for my wife and I with lap infant on the website recently. The trip is still upcoming but I got confirmation quickly and automatically with all of us on the same PNR, but all three of us have separate eTicket numbers - not sure if by "confirmation number" folks are referring to the PNR/record locator or the eTicket numbers.

Now last fall when I booked a international paid ticket and did not initially add the lap infant, they had to put the infant on a separate PNR and linked it somehow to our PNR. I will say that things did not go smoothly. First it took a long time over the phone to create the infant record, then since I wanted to make sure to get a paper receipt it took just as long at United club desk for them to figure out how to apply payment for the fee and generate a paper receipt. Then on actual travel day, even though I had all the valid reservations showing up on the website and printed out, plus the printed out paper receipt directly from a United employee, there was some problem the check-in agent could see with the infant boarding pass that the gate would not accept it. It was some extra letter like "A" printed on the boarding pass that the sympathetic check-in agent knew would be rejected by the gate agents. It took 45 minutes standing at the check-in counter with a cranky toddler,for the agent to work with a back-office by phone to properly fix the reservation and print out a valid boarding pass.

oliver0118

Thanks for you reply! I also booked one on the website recently. It went through without a problem. I have no idea what happened this time. The only difference between them are that the previous one was a direct flight from US to Asia, and this one involve a domestic connection in the US. The other explanation I could think of is the previous flight was operated by Continental before the merging while the current one by United... Anyway, I have to say there must be some bug in their system.

HerbFlyer

Originally in our saga we bought W fare tickets for us (so we could use GPUs). I think at the time of the *real* ticket for our son being issued (approximately two weeks later) the lowest available fare published -- and available on our flights -- was a K fare, and it seemed to be based upon that. In other words, all three of us paid the same customs fee taxes but his 10% fare was about 7% of the adult tickets...

The agents won't give you a straight answer on this- they really don't know. If they do, don't trust it. You could get the rate desk on the phone to answer it specifically if you want... but in the end for an economy ticket it'd only be a few $ difference. For upgraded fares is where the numbers mattered a lot more to us.

oliver0118

Thanks a lot for sharing! I booked the business international award tickets, that's why I'm a little bit concerned about the price... I called twice today, got the same answer that the infant ticket will be based on the price on the day when I booked mine. They said all the information of the infant ticket is there, including the total price; they just need more time to process it... But after reading your post, I started worrying about it...

ThriftyTourist

Can you provide an update on whether the infant was ticketed properly, etc. I'm planning on booking a award redemption ticketed on United for a Thai Airways flight (LAX-KIX-BKK) for 2 adults and 1 lap infant. I've been reading a lot of people are having problems with United infant bookings since April 2013. Just wondering if everything worked out. Thanks.

Lurker1999

Thread necromancy but I'm running into this same problem this year. I have a PNR for a lap child and when I call United they can see the reservation as attached to the correct award reservation with 2 adults.

However, I have failed to obtain a receipt, eticket number or anything else from United via email despite 3 separate calls where the agent states he's sent the receipt to my (correct) email address. Any ideas besides calling another dozen times? I really prefer not to have too many people touching the reservation as we all know that the more things get handled, the more likely they are to get messed up.