It has kicked in as of today. Has anybody changed their minds about booking flights?

Business Saver Mileage Award tickets Q
 

I have a one way flight from CDG to DEN. I booked a Business Saver ticket for 57,500 miles. It is 3 flights; the first 2 are in Business; the last from ORD to DEN is economy. Not a deal breaker. The TA part is on 777-300

I found seats on Aeroplan site [same Business Saver] for flight on LH/UA where the TA is on LH A 380. It is only 2 segments which is nice. Only catch - 70,000 miles. We don't have the extra and don't want to buy the miles. Aeroplan wants 45,000 miles but $358 in fees/tax/surcharge.

When I asked why the difference - agent said "because it it over water and the seats are on upper deck"

?? Is this correct?

Is there a way I can get the tickets with 45,000 points and not pay those crazy fees?

No. Look at the award chart. Partner awards cost more miles.

yes -- UA has two different redeemption charts -- one for UA only flights and one that include partnet flights. While pretty much the same for economy seats, premium cabin awards on partners require more more miles -- in some cases F cabin 3 class, a whole lot more miles.

While this is a question for the AC fourm, the answer is no. That is the way AC runs awards. It is called fuel surcharges.

The UA MP award program does not charge fuel surcharges. UA MP miles can not be used to purchase AeroPlan awards. UA MP miles can only be used on united.com (which can include partner flights).

United knows it needs to charge to fly on better airlines.

Regarding the "crazy fees." I have two AC flights, LAX-YYZ-DXB in J. Total fees, including my HNL-LAX segment is $21.20. That seemed pretty good to me.

The really crazy fees are out of Heathrow, and are for taxes. They have high security and charge for it.

Doubt that is the issue. The OP is not likely stopping in LHR/UK (since OWs don't allow stops and no ATP if just connecting via UK airport).

CDG has its on set of fees.

But AC tickets can have crazy YQ fees which are not found on UA awards. However Hawaii tickets don't normal have any YQ -- but try Europe and the story is different on AC awards depending on carriers used.

I thought there was a thread (it's old now and I can't find it), related to travel/tickets booked on the old (pre February 2014) award chart.

My wife/two kids and myself just returned from our last ticket from the OLD chart - and we did so successfully, although it was a bit hairy for a few minutes, but I think my ticket was a 'special case'.

Synopsis:
Ticket originally booked 29-January-2014.
3 Passengers (my daughter would have just turned two.) in C from PLZ-JNB-IAD
Modified ticket, on purpose in September 2014 which re-ticketed and gave us new ticket numbers, causing the year validity to be until September 2015...but our dates were in late August 2015.

Confirmed about 5 different times with SA to ensure that our tickets were good - they were. About 2 weeks before the flight, got an infant ticket issued for the itin (sadly, ~US$500!!!)...everything good and we got 4 ticket numbers now.

Outbound trip good and all worked well.

Arrived at Port Elizabeth about two hours before our flight. We just waited and the agent didn't really say much. About 20 minutes later, she finally started saying that there was an issue - Since the JNB-IAD 'direct' flight had recently switched to JNB-DKR-IAD to a combination of that and JNB-ACC-IAD on alternating days, our day was on the JNB-ACC-IAD, but we were booked on the DKR flight number which didn't exist, so we were on 'standby'. Our agent called the main desk and after a few minutes, confirmed us on our flight through Accra, and got seats close to each other.

All worked out well, and on board we were able to switch seats to next to each other and then scored the luckiest deal with that the only empty C seat from ACC-IAD was next to us, and we had four flat bed seats for two adults a 2 year old and a 7 month old...perfect, and quite the way to travel!

But, I was nervous the whole time until we had the tickets printed and we were on board - but all worked out great and if you have ticket numbers with validity of less than a year, i'm sure that you'll be all set for when your flight comes around!

I'm almost done with UA RDMs, so hopefully everyone got some good *A usage out of the miles - I did everything possible to ensure I wouldn't fly UA any more!!!

-jeremy

pricing for award ticket: a mixed itinerary of UA J and partner J
 

Hi everybody, I'm working on an itinerary to Japan, and have a question about prices:

EWR-HAM in UA J, then HAM-FRA in LH J;
stopover in Frankfurt for a week
FRA-Tokyo Haneda (HND) in ANA J;
NRT-ORD in ANA J

I paid 150k miles (basically it's priced as a round trip between the US and Japan, since a stopover and open-jaw are included)

Here is my question: the transatlantic flight is in UA J; then from Frankfurt is ANA J (so a partner flight). Should this half of the ticket really cost 75k, or rather 65k (the price of a UA-operated J award to Japan), or 70k (splitting the difference, since there are intercontinental flights on both UA and a partner airline)?
I apologize if this is answered somewhere, I couldn't find it.

A single partner J segment prices the ticket as partner J award regardless of some of the segments being UA.

thank you so much for the clarification -- it all makes sense now.

I don't know if this is the correct thread for this question, and I apologize in advance if this is in the wrong place.

My girlfriend and I booked award tickets to Colombia several months ago, but she just found out that she can no longer go on the trip. I know that I cannot change the name on her ticket, but is it theoretically possible to cancel her ticket and immediately rebook a new one in another person's name? Is there any guarantee that the newly-available seat that I just canceled will be available to be booked as a new award, or am I essentially at the whim of United's award availability?

Since there's not a "set" number of award tickets offered on a given flight, and since there's no clue as to how and when they're added (other than often in the last day or two prior to flight), it's not the case that "returning" one automatically adds to the inventory. But, if you're drawing from the X bucket (non elite), which is zeroed out, but there is inventory in the XN (elite) bucket, it's always possible you might get an agent to over-ride the elite-only restriction. I've seen this happen for my brother (a non-elite) at least once. But if XN is zeroed then I wouldn't get my hopes up. In any event, you're going to get hit with the redeposit fee (unless Plat-level elite or above). Hope this helps-

It does - thanks.

Please report back how it turns out. Always interesting for all of us armchair airline experts to try to post-rationalize why it turned out the way it did. :D Best of luck-