So your original ticket was LH J but you paid LH F ? hoping F will open up within 14 days of departure then call to upgrade from your j to f?.

The original was a redemption all in F. The first leg, confirmed in F on UA and then J for the LH flights and F on the return on UA. As my redemption was for F as soon as the bucket opened up I was able to claim an F seat on LH, instead of the J seat I was in, as the miles had been deducted for an F seat.

Changed the Airline from UA F to LH in F when the LH F opened up.

No, I have not found this to be true at all. I just tried to change a flight on- line. My flight consists of three segments. However, I only want to change the last segment and it will not let me do this unless all three segments are available in the system. I have an economy segment and F is now available. (It is an F award.) This cannot be done on-line and I wasted 10 minutes trying to do it. The lesson: call!

Today was able to change an I award booked in January from:

FCO/FRA/YYZ/SFO -- LH first leg, other 2 AC, with overnights in FRA and YYZ
to
FCO/MUC/SFO -- LH both legs, overnight in MUC, so get home a day earlier.

Repriced correctly, but .bomb crapped out at the last step. Previous experience was that I could go back a page and try again, but today no dice.

Called UA, found that the automated system did have the itinerary change, and the res agent fixed by reissuing the ticket in under a minute. When I thanked her, she commented, "The easiest thing I'll have to do today".

And, LH has the changed itinerary in their system marked as confirmed, which as we know is the only thing that really matters.

You are right. Yes, my reservations involve far fewer segments than yours. I was amazed on how easy to change reservations: dates, carriers, routes, classes, and repeated changes post-2/3 on the same reservation, all without running into the new award table. I found this surprising in view of how .bomb was behaving before. Too bad it does not work for many-segmenet award reservations, but for simpleer reseravations the online system sure does not look like a bomb, rather it is some of the phone (including 1K) agents and some of their supervisors that look pretty bombed.

SYD-BKK-PEK-SFO C class award on TG and CA successfully changed online to MEL-LAX-SFO C/Y award on UA. Web page successfully priced the change at pre-February C class award rate.

What you tried to do would never have been possible to accomplish on-line even before 2/3/14, before the change of award miles. To change on line you always needed to have the new award available as a complete itinerary with all segments as a part of the itinerary. If you want to change only some of the segments because other segments no longer available, you would have to call regardless of the change of mile table. Therefore, the lesson is still to try online first. And the most you can lose online is a couple minutes, versus the many tens of minutes in dealing with an incompetent or uninformed agent, not to mention the risk of getting a dreaded "PNR note".

What a mess this whole situation is. I called several times, talked to several different agents, and even had one of them supposedly speak to a "specialist" on the changes. I give up. I ended up buying a ticket from my new origin so I could catch the award ticket return city. UA is run so poorly if this is what is happening.

Did 2 or 3 changes recently online and with agents. All went very smoothly. Let's hope they're finally getting their act together.

I just changed CDG-FRA (LH C) and FRA-IAD (UA F) to different dates and a different carrier on the latter flight, from UA F to LH F (on a 748). I got an agent on the first try who was able to handle my request without any additional mileage, albeit with 30m of hold time. I'm now set for NH F square, TG F (A380), and LH F (748) including FRA FCT. At least I'll go out in style.

have not made any change yet UA reissued the tickets TWICE?!

I noticed the first reissue was after TK has changed a 5:40pm arrival YYZ to 5:50pm. The change was shown online a week or so ago but I ignored it. Then UA sent a schedule change email, followed by a reissue on the 20th. I checked Suadi site and the new tickets look good. LH site show both the very original ticket number and the latest re-issue.

Case closed or so I thought.

Then on Sunday 2/23, another reissue came in. I could not see anything has ever changed. Both Saudi site and LH site confirmed the latest reissue is good.

But why there are a second reissue? This really bugs me.

I just made an online award change for a two C tickets original routing SAV-FCO r/t (booked Oct 2013) on US. New routing SAV-MPL on LH return unchanged. When I called about the change I was told that there would be no change fee but I would have to pay 40k additional miles (20k per ticket). I ultimately made the change online and I was charged $100 change fee but no additional miles. I'll take $100 to save 40k miles.

Just changed the return leg of an LAX BKK ticket in F.

Tried to do it for days online but kept getting an error message when I tried to finalize the ticket.

This morning I almost got the change to take but according to UAL they could not process the two cards I tried to use for the hundred buck fee.

But, when I looked at the record I saw I now had two flights to NRT and no flight to LAX.

Called the BKK UAL office (thank the Lord they still have one) and they got me on a flight to LAX. Still had to pay a hundred bucks and I now suspect I will have been charged three change fees.

But, no extra miles charged.

Success!

I called in to change a 3/12 EWR-CDG in UA F to 3/10 EWR-CDG UA F connecting to 3/11 CDG-VIE OS J and 3/11 VIE-EVN OS J. The first agent I called told me that every OS flight for the entire week from CDG-VIE was zeroed out in Y and J, despite united.com showing both Y and J available on every flight. I hungup, called back and the second agent was able to process my changes in less than five minutes. No difference in miles, just the taxes, ticket has already been reissued.

Made my first successful change to an award today on a long-standing award ticket down to Australia. I was supposed to go via BKK and spend a couple days in Bangkok on the way. Given the situation I've decided to stay in Tokyo and make that my stopover instead and just transit via BKK but not actually spend time in Bangkok.

I was able to change my original NRT - BKK flight (TG J) to NRT - BKK (UA GF - no TG available) three days later (so now I go NRT - BKK - SYD without the stopover in BKK). No additional charge in fact I got $6.00 back (not really sure why I got money back since the actual overall routing is exactly the same with just date changes and a change from TG J ---> UA GF).

Was able to do it all online and can't complain about the outcome - get to avoid the uncertainty of BKK and still get F even if it is UA (and thankfully it's while the 744 is still doing NRT - BKK).

Of note the itinerary itself was already priced as an F award ticket (OZ F, TG F, and NH F already in as major trunk legs) but it was nice that I was able to make the change with no cost and no need to call in and deal with anything - especially since this ticket was booked last April well before the devaluation was announced

TG will open F on the 380 NRT-BKK at approx. T-14. It tends to be wide open. I would watch and make that change. The hard and soft product are in a completely different universe from UA.

Changed a basic HKG-NYC r/t on EVA to have the outbound instead go on LH (via FRA).

Agent originally said 40K add'l miles - let her know this pricing was grandfathered in.

I thought for sure she might bring up the "both oceans" issue - but after about 10 min it was reissued w/o any problem.

^. I'll keep an eye out for it - thankfully it's early in my trip so if it doesn open up within T-14 I can call in from the US and not have to worry about monitoring from abroad. If not it's not I'll survive I know I'm going to be exhausted by that point so I think the bed is the most important thing and while it's no TG F, from everything I've read at the very least the GF bed on the 744 is comfortable especially for a 7 hour flight

Access to the old award chart
 

Per this page: http://travelsort.com/blog/old-unite...ed-award-chart

Has anyone done anything like this?

Hypothetically, I have an award itinerary booked on Jan 1, 2014, and is scheduled to fly on Apr 1, 2014, how would that work for me?

I mean, let's say I cancel the itinerary by Feb 28, 2014, how much longer will I have access to the old UA chart?

Thanks, and happy flying.

As far as I know you won't have any. You only have access by altering a ticket that was booked prior to Feb 3rd (such as the ticket you referenced) but once you cancel (or fly and complete) that ticket you no longer can alter by the old price and any new bookings require the new prices.

Your best course of action would be to change the April 1, 2014 booking to a future date until you are able to know the dates you are able to fly (as long as within 1 year of original Jan 1 booking date per award rules) and then get those dates and fly - but once you cancel your old reservation it's unlikely you'll be able to access old prices in any form from that booking.

Exactly. Do not cancel your per-2/3/14 award ticket. If you do not know when to use the ticket, change it to a new award ticket far in the future (331 days max), so you do not have to change it again soon or often. The optimal time to change is just before 4/1/14, so your newly issued ticket will have a new life that lasts to late March 2015. If your itinerary is not complicated and can normally be changed on line, do it on line.

Was finally able to avoid transiting LOS and found some availability for JNB-JFK.
Original booking JNB-LOS-IAH-DAL. (SA/UA/UA)

Changed date to 1 day prior.
Changed routing to JNB-JFK. No availability to Dallas.
Changed to SAA only. No united leg.
Basically changed everything except cabin. (Still business)

Agent wanted the new mileage of 80K instead of already booked 60K.
I understand she had a point since I changed the destination or "zone".
I pushed back anyway nicely. Saying it doesn't make sense to pay 20k more miles for one less segment due to lack of availability. Asked for supervisor approval since it's taken so long for SAA business to even open up.
Agent came back agreeing to honor original booking. Only downside was $75 close in booking fee since travel is next week. But that was expected.
Good luck all.

I'm entertaining the idea of adding an SQ segment to my pre-2/3 award booking. The regions would be the same so no change in miles IIRC. Is this a crazy idea? Has anyone done it, w/o extra miles?

Tried to change EZE-GRU/GIG-LIS-LHR all in C in 12/14 on TK/TP/TP to EZE-PTY-BOG-LHR on CM/CM/AV all in C in 1/15. First agent tried for 20k more miles, pushed back, went to rates desk and would not budge on the extra 20K miles. HUCA. Second agent went to rates desk and did the change without the extra miles.

I did a date change today with all segments the same.

SIN-BKK-CDG-EWR on TG C, TG F, and UA F respectively. Just extended the date from December 2014 to January 2015. The agent yesterday said to call back today to see if TG had confirmed the availability, saying it wasn't instant. Then the agent today had to call her supervisor to make sure the old mileage price could be retained, and after a moderate hold she came back and said the old price would be retained.

Now, if I changed the routing to SIN-BKK-FRA-EWR, would that trigger a reprice? Based on what people wrote above, it seems like the answer is no, right? Or have some people had trouble with routing changes when destination and origin are the same?

Nice score on the new AV flight from BOG-LHR. I'm interested to try that sometime.

That should not trigger a reprice. You don't even need to keep origin/destination - you just need to keep them in the same regions.

I'm happy to report that I just made major changes to an itinerary with ease! I changed the ticket online using the multi-city search through the change path, and made changes to the class of service (there was one business class segment before, now it's all first), changes to the carriers, and completely reversed the origin and destination regions. Since the award type didn't change (WF76 - an F award between SE Asia and the US) even though I changed the direction, there were no additional miles due.

As I was clicking through flights, the boxes indicated that more miles would be required, but when I got to the end, the computer priced it as an even exchange with only a $50 change fee and difference in tax.

Original itinerary booked for November:
BKK-KIX (O - TG)
KIX-ICN (I - OZ)
ICN-FRA (O - OZ)
-overnight less than 24 hrs-
FRA-ORD (O - UA)

New itinerary next week:
MCO-FRA (O - LH)
FRA-NRT (O - NH)
NRT-BKK (O - TG)
-overnight less than 24 hrs-
BKK-PEK (O - TG)

Thanks, so what you mean is, despite the tickets being book on Jan 1, I can still fly as late as late March, because my original flying date is April 1, 2014?

I will have to give them a call, the itinerary is way too complicated. We are talking about 10 flights per itinerary.

Original itin:
AUS-ORD-NRT/HND-KIX-BKK

Tried to change online (error) and ticket got messed up when they tried to fix it.

Ended up getting new dates for that routing finally after 2 hrs on the phone, but they claim I can't change it anymore... NRT/HND is <24h

There's a lot of confusion as to how to change pre-Feb 3 award tickets without extra miles, but here's a few lessons I've learned:

1. If you can do the change online yourself, do it online. That's your best bet.

2. The cancel WITHOUT redeposit and then re-ticket online may work for some people, but ONLY if your ticket is uncomplicated and your new itinerary is bookable online. So if your ticket has been changed by an agent, or if it was held in one account and ticketed from another, or if it crosses 2 oceans, or has a lot of segments, BE careful.

I tried to do the cancel-no-redeposit trick, BUT my original itinerary had been modified by several agents over the phone and was NO LONGER changeable online. I only got the "Error - contact United Reservations" message everytime I tried to do anything with this ticket. When I called, they changed my ticket, but wanted more miles.

I had to go through the whole run-around with the MP desk, and their agents got confused and thought my new itinerary would be cheaper. Instead, it repriced at the new levels, but they ticketed it anyways - now my account has a NEGATIVE miles balance.

Even after you've canceled an itinerary (but not redeposited), the original itinerary is still there in the shadows, and any changes will be priced relative to the old one. But if the old itinerary was complicated, or screwed up for whatever reason, the computer will not be able to book you a new one because it will try and REFER to the old itinerary to compare mileage levels.

LESSON learned: If you want to cancel without redepositing, MAKE SURE first that you can change the itinerary online BEFORE you cancel. Try making a small test change, like changing the dates of one of the legs. If the computer errors out, then CALL in and make a change. Do NOT cancel unless necessary, because once you cancel, and if you must call in to make changes, things might reprice at the new award prices, even though you never redeposited your ticket. And also, now you don't have an active itinerary to say "well, I'm just changing the dates", because you have nothing more than a ticket with no flights on it.

3. I've been able to change an itinerary over the phone for different dates, different routing, same origin/destination region without repricing. This has been proven possible by numerous peoples' experiences here, and if you don't get an agent willing to do it, absolutely hang up and call again, but DON'T LET THEM RETICKET you at the higher award prices because you probably won't get those miles back. Once the miles are in United's hands, it's game over.

I think some people have had success canceling WITHOUT redepositing the miles. In other words, cancel the itinerary but keep the award ticket open, so you can re-book online and still have access to the old award chart.

The pitfall of this is that if your new itinerary is NOT bookable online, or if your former itinerary has been worked on extensively by an agent, your new itinerary will require CALLING in to book, and at that point, a re-price at new levels is very likely.

Hence, if you are likely to travel to the SAME REGIONS but at a later date, change the ticket for now to a later date rather than canceling without redepositing, because that's a less guaranteed route.

No clue how you got this to work. I have DFW-JFK-ICN-SGN that i'm trying to change to BKK-FRA-DFW and it doesn't even show me options for available partner flights through the change function. I can see them if I try to book through the normal search engine, but it hides them in the change ticket engine. I can book DFW-FRA-BKK on LH and TG, but I can't book BKK-FRA-DFW on anything but United metal.

Yes, especially for those with status (1K, plat?) of waiving change fees.

Your ticket is good for one year, so you can fly not only as late as late March, but as late as December 31, 2014. However, you have to change (or cancel) your ticket before April 1 because otherwise your ticket has no value when you do not board the April 1 flight.

Ok, so just to confirm, if I... cancelled the ticket w/o redepositing the miles, I ABSOLUTELY have to use the ticket by Dec 31 2014, not March 31 2015, because my original booking is Jan 1 2014, despite that I fly on April 1 2014. Correct?

BTW, I just got emails from UA about my itineraries regarding the flight changes in it. Does this change anything? Or am I given something more to work with that I am just not aware of yet?

Hello all,

I am trying to change this ticket from HNL to MIA and its pretty much impossible. I see the saver award open when i do a regular search but when I go and try to do it with the change ticket button and it says not available. But it is available...So frustrating! What do you guys recommend?

Also what is cancel the itinerary but keep the award ticket open? how do i do that??

Thanks again!

Successful Changes to *A Awards Without Incurring Additional Miles after Feb. 3
 

Anyone have any troubles changing a ticket that adds a japan transit? Ie right now I have BKK-fra-iAd; looking go change it to BKK-NrT-ord-dca. Award type should stay the same but japan connection added? Should be easy?

Thanks
FDW

Just a warning to those changing award tickets: I have an extensive 9 segment itinerary to SE Asia. I had changed the date on the outbound, then tried to make another change on the return to a different departing city. After speaking to several agents and not allowing me to do it I just gave up. Now I see one of my segments on my itinerary has just dropped off! This flight is total gone. It is departing tomorrow so I was really alarmed. The agent I spoke too didn't know why it happened, but had to re-issue the ticket.

Just a fair warning to those who are changing award ticket. Especially those with complex tickets- make sure you check your itineraries close to departure time and that nothing funky has happened to your ticket.

You probably won't have too many problems. Though this is a significant change in routing, since the origin/destination is the same, you're probably fine as long as NRT is merely a connection and not a stop of >24 hours. If it was me, I'd try first to make the change online, then call if that fails. Risk is relatively low, since you're not canceling anything in order to rebook, but merely changing.

I managed to change pre-deval EWR-FRA-DOH in J for 60k miles for March travel to TXL-BRU-JFK in J for 50k in August. I was actually ready for it to price out at the new price of 70k, but it didn't!

WOW!

The website lets you do this? Not only the routing totally changed, it is a completely different type of award!

Did the 10K miles go back to your account?

You have to COMPETE all travel within one year from the date of ticket issued.

For example, if it is issued in Jan 1st 2014, you would need to FINISH flying the latest on Dec 31, 2014.

When your first flight is, has no bearing on the ticket validity. However if you dont want to fly the first flight in April, you must cancel it BEFORE the departure date. Else you lose everything. i.e. your ticket will then has no value.

Unless the flight change is significant, there is not much leverage power you have. Even if the flight change is significant, you can only have 2 options - one, cancel the ticket without penalty and get back all the miles and cash payment. Or, rebook it to another itinerary but still within the one year mark. The only obligation UA has to you, is to refund the miles and cash without any fee.

You cannot make it to travel in March 2015.