izzik

I had a 2 person award with 1 segment on TAP and the transatlantic on UA.
Asked the 1K desk to refund for one person but keep the other person the same.
Presumably they just split the PNR and canceled one of them.. but the miles have yet to redeposit. Sometimes I wonder if using the website is better.. the award miles usually redeposit instantly.

zoechow

I know I can cancel an award ticket for a small fee and get the miles back. This is great. But if I make an award ticket for two, can I cancel one passenger and keep the other, or go down from 2 passengers to 1? Or would I have to cancel the whole ticket and restocked? (Which would make me nervous about availability). Thanks in advance!



Sorry: mean not “restocked” but “re-ticket”

jsloan

You should be able to cancel one passenger from a two-person PNR with no issues. Nothing will need to be re-ticketed; they'll basically split that passenger off onto their own reservation and then cancel that one.

blug

Is this also true if the person you are cancelling is a child that can't travel alone? Can they still split the PNR?

jsloan

For the purpose of cancelling it, they should still be able to do so, yes. Agents can override just about any rules that they want to.

nnn

Note that if it's a partner award, it may not be so simple (or even doable).

jsloan

I have yet to see any reports of people not being able to cancel a single traveler on a partner award. I understand the caution, but this really shouldn't be an issue. The problems with partner awards come up because UA is trying to reissue a ticket, and is validating inventory before doing so. Cancelling a single traveler does not require reissuing a ticket -- basically, the ticket that is to be cancelled is split from the original reservation and then cancelled, and the original ticket is untouched. I'm not certain that UA actually needs to create a PNR in their system to hold the to-be-cancelled ticket. I think they do, but I could be mistaken. Regardless, that's internal to UA.

If anyone has direct experience with this since Oct. '16, feel free to chime in, but I would be extremely surprised if this were an issue.

(In the worst possible case, the person who's not traveling could no-show and then redeposit the miles after paying the $125 no-show fee. But I really don't think it would ever get that far).

stevenou

I did this mid-Dec 17 and had no issues. As mentioned above, they simply split off to different reservation and cancel the new one. This was a United award operated by a partner booked directly on United.com.

I've had complications in the past when the partner locks United out of making changes (happened with SWISS). It's still possible to get it done but it may take escalating to a more experienced agent plus they need to get in touch with the partner airline so you could be on hold for a while.

zoechow

Thanks to all, and especially for this one: I am dealing with a ticket on Swiss. Perhaps I will just make two separate tickets to begin with, just in case. Trying to think of any downsides...

Leedsflyer

Sorry if this has been answered already -- couldn't find it if so. I'm holding a multi-pax reseration with award miles in biz with Avianca, and want to split off 2 pax to travel on a different day.

So far I've spoken to two agents. The first said it was tricky but they'd try, and I thought he said they'd done it, but the nthe line dropped :-(.

Second agent said it wasn't possible, and even if she could do it, ,when the remaining passenger came to check in they wouldn't succeed. So they wanted me to cancel the entire reservation and rebook. But there are no more seats available on the original day, so there's a risk that cancelling wouldn't necessarily result in any of those going back into the award inventory.

Is that agent right or should I just try again? I've already got some holiday elements booked for the trip (I've booked outward and return as seprate one ways) so don't want to loose the flights altogether (though it's not til December so probably would still get something...). Cancelling 3 seats with any luck would mean that 1 would reappear but I realise that's not guaranteed... hence my nervousness.

Any comments/advice welcome.

thanks.

jsloan

The first agent is correct. It may be tricky but it should be possible.

Leedsflyer

Ok, so I called the 1k line and the first agent said "no problem" and proceeded to split the reservation. However when I checked the reservations online, one of them looked ok (the one with just 1 pax, with a new reservation number) but the second one had all three on still, with 3 e-ticket numbers (with the same eticket number as on the split reservation). This looked odd, so I called again, explaining that I was just about to cancel the 2nd reservation (with the 2/3 pax on it) as I had now booked them onto a different day on a new researvation; and this agent said that it was very likely that Avianca would think that the remaining 1 pax reseravation was "irregular" as splitting reservations on *A flights isn't properly supported and that it was likely that Avianca might cancel it at any time. Unfortunately I can't just book a new journey as despite the fact that I put two seats back in to the pook (by cancelling the 2 pax reservation) these didn't go into the award inventory.

Do people think that Avianca might really might cancel it because it's somehow a faulty reservation? I tried called Avianca, but they were not at all helpful :-(

thanks

WineCountryUA

This is the "its tricky" part. If AV accepts the change and does not try to revalidate the ticket, it might work out. A lot depends on how the agent made the split -- a really acknowledge agent knows what not to do and that may vary by partner. If AV tries to re-validate the ticket, problems can happen as new inventory may not exist (even though you hold space). This is where it can go south and there is nothing you can do. So splitting partner award tickets should only be done if the agent truly is a black-belt (and never online). This was one of the great benefits of the now-gone 1K desk or Honolulu phone agents or a few other select folks.

At this point this is a way and see situation and it may be a few days before the dust settles.

Kacee

Not sure I'm following . . . every passenger has his or her own ticket, and each ticket has its own unique number. If multiple pax really have the same e-ticket number, something is very wrong.

Total nonsense. (I'm not saying there's no possibility the agent didn't mess up the ticket, but the explanation is ridiculous.)

Leedsflyer

What happened was:

originally: 1 PNR, 3 PAX, each with their own eticket

after split: 2 PNR, a new one with 1 PAX and their own ticket, and the old PNR with all 3 PAX still listed with their own etickets (the third one having the same eticket number as on the split away PNR).

When I then cancelled the original PNR it said it was refunding 3 x the miles. But in fact in my account only has 2 lots of miles refunded (correcly)


The second agent yesterday said the same thing. Just saying. Clearly I didn't get the "black belt" agent recommended by Winecountry on any of the calls :-(