adambrau

I have gotten the return mileage refunded on two occasions. On both, I was able to persuade UA that by booking a one way mileage return was possible that wasn't by changing the RT on united.com. The crappy re-booking engine on united.com can sometimes be your friend....


Adam

WineCountryUA

Splitting an unflown RT into two OWs is not a standard activity but you can try. There have been some reports in the past of success but those may have been when space was available. There have also others that have been unsuccessful.

quintic

How about canceling the return flight of an unflown RT reward flight? My friend found a nonstop OW flight instead. But the out bounding flight is no longer available.

update: the return flight is cancelled, and miles have been redeposited.

quintic

One more question, I saw this on United website, "When flying with one of our Star Alliance partners, changes must be made at least 24 hours before departure." However I asked this question to an agent today, she told me that I can cancel the reward flight (AC flight) on the same day. Has anyone tried that before?

WineCountryUA

Cancellations are not problem, however, getting a confirmed change in the last 24 hours is a problem for some and is not a problem for others.

quintic

Got it, thanks!

itsMoe

So I booked an award flight, through UA but on OAL metal, round trip.

After flying the outbound, I had to cancel the remainder of the trip. On the UA site, I was offered two options: 1) keep this flight and change it at a later date, or 2) cancel and redeposit the miles, with the fees being waived on account of being 1k. I selected option 2, and it errored out.

I call UA, and they tell me that they see it as canceled, but that the miles won't be redeposited. They say I have to use this flight within one year between two cities in the respective regions of the original booking, i.e. since the round trip was middle east to Europe and back, I can only rebook this thing on another Europe to middle east route.

Now when I log into my account, the flight only shows up under past itineraries. The only thing I can do on the site at this point is request a receipt.

I can't seem to find this in the rules. And also, this is not at all the information that the UA website showed me before I pressed the cancel button. Any advice?

jsloan

https://www.united.com/web/en-US/con...vel/types.aspx

(Rules are at the bottom)

polarbears

I know this is an ancient thread, but it was the one I found searching for this question.

Apparently the old United policy ended up sticking. I'd booked a roundtrip award from SFO to CDG because I thought I might want to use the regional hop ("excursion"). Usually I book one-ways for award tickets so I never ran into this before.

For the return I only got an X seat, so when R space opened up I bought a one way economy ticket to use a GPU and get a better seat.

I called to cancel the award ticket and was told it's not possible to cancel, so I have to use a trip from Europe to North America sometime in the next year or lose the miles.

Kacee

You can certainly cancel and rebook (within one year of ticket issuance), you just can't get a miles refund. The unused portion of a roundtrip award itinerary has always become nonrefundable once you've flown the outbound.

The post you're quoting related to the ability to change a partner award ticket, not refund it.

chuckywang

Hello,

I recently booked a RT award ticket with United. I took the outbound flight and am currently at my destination. However, my plans have changed and I would like to cancel the return flight and redeposit the miles into my account.

I called United and they informed me that since I am in the middle of my itinerary, they cannot cancel the flight and redeposit the miles. I just want to confirm on this forum that there really is no other option for me to redeposit my miles. I do see a "Cancel" button online but I am afraid to click it at this moment, for fear it will just cancel my flight and not give me anything back. Do I have any other options in this situation?

findark

United is correct that you cannot cancel and redeposit part of a round-trip award. You may, however, cancel now and later pay a change fee to use the miles toward any travel which would still complete the original round-trip.

polarbears

You can change it to another ticket later. Obviously if you pay fees for this it's not terribly attractive, but if you are 1k you can just change it to something else in the future.

The exact thing happened to me this weekend (I had an economy award ticket but bought a revenue ticket and upgraded it with a GPU instead). I called when the website didn't let me cancel it and got the same answer you did. I changed it to another ticket for the same price in February next year and when actually have something to use it for I'll change it again.

The agent said I have to use it for the same-ish route; I was going from Paris so he said "Europe to North America", but on the site it seemed like I could change it to go from Asia to North America, too (I didn't try that as I'd have to put another 5k miles "into" the ticket).

chuckywang

Can I change it to a flight that is not the same origin/destination as the original flight?

To provide context, the flight I have now is KOA-HNL-ORD. I would like to change it to KOA-LAX. I understand there is a change fee for this, but for now I just want to know if this is an option.

jsloan

LAX and ORD are both in the same region. This particular change should be fine.