Crossing both oceans on a US ↔ Asia award
 

So - we all know that you can go US to/from Asia over either the Pacific or the Atlantic. I currently have an award ticket that's Atlantic outbound and Pacific return (ticketed, thankfully). The problem is that I'm trying to make some adjustments on the TATL segment, and half the agents I talk to say "you can't do this, this is A RTW ticket". Sigh.

Does anyone know of any "official" sources of what the routing rules are? Any agent I speak with either balks on this rule, or the 2 OJ/1 SO rule. If I could only combine them all, I'd get one super-agent.

TIA.

The problem is there are no official sources. Truly none. Agents are told if the computer prices it, great. If not, sorry.

Having said that, I just booked ICN-SFO-YYZ-LHR-ICN and it priced just fine.

I just book two one-way award tickets. It costs the same number of miles as a single RT. Aside from getting out of the "round-the-world" issue in the event the outbound and inbound are across different oceans, this also makes it far less complicated to make changes, since there are fewer things to change. The only disadvantage is that you don't get a free stopover.

Yup, that's my problem - my trip will never price. and thus it goes FUBAR.

Looks like yours was a straight RT, that's probably why you could make it happen easily enough. It's the OJ that's screwing stuff up for me.

I have done both as recent as last year on 1 rt. just call an agent until they know how to put it in.

I have the following trip booked (made the reservation last winter)
xxx-ORD-NRT-SIN
DPS-BKK-FRA-BRU-ORD-xxx

Earlier this week, I wanted to make a small change to ORD-xxx (the plane had changed so now first class was an option). When I called to make the change, the phone agent couldn't get it to automatically happen. She was, however, able to get a supervisor to do it fairly quickly.

Bottom line, I can't directly answer your question, but I was able to fairly easily make a change to a RT OJ two ocean trip.

I had some similar problems booking HNL-ICN-FRA-LHR a few weeks back and DUB-FRA-ICN-HNL on the return. I had to call back a few times until I got an agent who was willing to figure out how to make it work. Even though it only crosses on ocean, the default is to travel to Europe via eastward-traveling flights, so wanting to travel in the opposite direction really seemed to cramp United's style. It eventually worked, and I now have some cool flights planned in OZ C and F. :cool:

Any success with Asia via Europe awards lately?
 

I just tried to book EWR-ORD-NRT (Destination), HND-PEK-FRA-ARN (Stopover), ARN-ORD (finish) and the agent tells me this isn't a legal routing and they have been cracking down. Should I call back and try again, or have they squeezed all the joy out of trying to put together complex itineraries?

I had this problem last month when I pieced together a round trip EWR-PVG-SIN-CGK and back from MNL-BKK-FRA-EWR (this showed up as a valid one way online, but couldn't be attached to the first part of the trip)

Luckily I did without stopovers and just split it up as two one ways. The agents I was speaking with seemed more strict about it than usual...

HUACA. See the master OJ thread where this is an ongoing discussion.

I normally believe in HUACA, but since let's say June, no matter how many times I call in, I have been unable to get them to ticket a USA-Asia routing that goes TPAC and TATL.

It took me 7 calls, ~6-7 hours on the phone, every agent spoke with both a supe and a rate desk - but I got mine ticketed. This was over the past month.

God bless you then, I don't think I could stand 7 hours on the phone with the mouth breathers at UA without smashing my phone to bits. How exactly were you able to get it to price? I have called dozens of times, escalated to supervisors (who are either the surliest .......s ever, or super helpful, nothing in between) and I always get that the computer will not allow it, they cannot force it to price, there's no way.

I got that response most of the time! I got lots of work done while on hold :) But fortunately I did get a couple of angels at key points. The issue is that it will never price, so you need an agent who's willing to force it through.

I started off each call with "just want to re-confirm you're familiar with the 2 OJ / 1 SO on an award rule"? If not, HUACA. Once that is established, you can start working with them too.

I also would say something like "this isn't going to price, even though it's an allowable award". You just have to hope you like the type of agent who enjoys a challenge!

Any idea how exactly they manage to force it through if there's no way to get it to price?