villox

I have a rather complex award booking involving LH, TG, and UA flights that I recently changed. Everything looks great in the ticket as pulled up on Saudi's site, and the ticket matches what United.com shows.

However, when I pull up the PNR on either TG or LH's site, they both show an extra segment from the old itinerary. It seems the cancel command to remove this segment never made it over to the LH/TG systems.

United tells me that they can't do anything, that on their side everything looks fine. Lufthansa tells me that United is the only one who can remove it.

To add another data point, when I go to checkin on Lufthansa.com using the PNR, it won't pull it up at all (it says that the entered data are not correct, You are outside 23 hours, or You are not enabled for checkin). But, when I try to checkin using the ticket number, it says "check-in is available from the day before departure"., so there is clearly a difference.

So my question is - who can get this segment out of there? Both UA and LH say the other has to do it. Is there something I can say to fix the underlying PNR so I don't have any issues at the airport? United actually called Lufthansa and they told them the airport might have to do it.

24hour checkin will be coming up later today, and maybe it won't, but I am too worried about this trip to leave it so I thought I'd come here for advice.

mherdeg

As long as the LH view of the PNR shows all the right LH flights, the TG view of the PNR shows all the right TG flights, the (xxx partner) view of the PNR shows all the right (xxx) flights, you should be ok.

If there are spurious extra LH confirmed segments in the LH view of the PNR that you aren't going to take, you could have a problem (missing them could lead to autocancellation and you'll need to ask LH for help). Worst case, get a LH airport agent to help (and be sure to get EU261/2004 compensation if they mess up and deny you boarding )

I've had an award flight with a CA segment which changed several times and ended up with a lot of gnarly incorrect TG/LH flights in the CA record, but they were purely informational; the CA flight didn't have any trouble with check-in or travel.

In general, yes, it is possible to get a reservation so messed up that you can only check in with your e-ticket number.

villox

Yeah, when the FIRST made the change, LH actually had segments missing. UA claimed it was fine but I couldn't select seats on the new segment. I made ANOTHER change, and now the new segments are in there, but there is one extra. Luckily it's the third segment in the itinerary and a day later than all the rest of the flights so I have time to work it out as long as I can get there.

I'll report back whether I'm actually able to check in later today.

The autocancellation is the thing I'm most worried about of course - I want that stupid thing out of there!

bmwe92fan

I understand your concern - this happens to me occasionally as well as I fly LH probably 6-8 times per month on 016 stock. Lately I've found the systems to be much better connected but there still seem to be infrequent orphan segments since I sometimes change my flight time from FRA....

Try changing your UA seats if possible and see if that refreshes your segments in the LH system - I've seen them update within an hour. Also - I have found that once I check in and get an LH BP it cleans up the LH system as well. Bottom line is watch it -- but don't stress too much....

villox

Well, I was able to check in and get the boarding passes for my first two segments, so I'll see if I can get some reassurance in the FCL in Frankfurt on Sunday to get that extra one removed.

AviationFreak

I've had a similar issue where I'd flown the first leg, pushed the return back a couple days and the original flights stuck in the LH system (even though not in the UA itinerary). Got it sorted out at the airport with an LH agent on the outbound, but she did say that they were valid segments and a no show would have triggered auto-cancellation of the rest of the itinerary.

villox

It didn't show on your ticket at all?

UPDATE: I called ANOTHER agent (this makes 1 LH agent that UA tried calling, and my fourth) and they were finally able to delete the segment. This after being told profusely by all the rest that it was impossible for them to touch it because only United could.

I'm now a happy camper.

AviationFreak

Sorry, to clarify, it didn't show on the UA ticket (had been properly deleted). However, it did show up on the LH PNR

777Pax

This is normal. Think about the PNR in UA (or the place you make your booking) as the Parent PNR. When the parent PNR contains OA space, "child" PNRs will be created to hold inventory in the reservation system of those OA carriers (LH and TG in this case).

These child PNRs will usually contain more information than just the segments that requried its creation. So in this case the LH PNR was created because of the LH segments, but it contains some of the UA/TG segments as "informational".

Historically, in the indsutry the informational segments only included the first upline/downline segment to the LH segment (sticking with this example). The proliferation of alliances and eTicketing has often expanded this to include the full itinerary.

If a change is made to the parent PNR, not all child PNRs will get update. For example, if the UA segments were the only ones changed those changes in many cases won't be transmitted to the LH/TG child PNRs as none of the LH/TG segments were changed and thus no messages would need to be generated to LH/TG.

If the change involved TG too, the TG child PNR would likely reflect the changed UA segments, but the LH PNR still would not.

Assuming the eTicket has been reissued, the ET in each system will reflect the changes, but this doesn't automatically result in the PNRs getting updated.

The erroneous UA segments in your LH/TG child PNRs will cause no problems.

villox

Except that's not what happened here. The first three segments in my itinerary were originally:

AAA-BBB (on UA)
BBB-CCC (on LH)
CCC-DDD (on LH)

I changed it to:
AAA-EEE (on LH)
EEE-DDD (on LH)

and the PNR showed:
AAA-EEE (on LH)
EEE-DDD (on LH)
CCC-DDD (on LH).

It was the CCC-DDD segment, another flight going to the same destination a day later, that was the problem.

In the past I have had this segment actually cause a problem on checkin for LH because what their site was trying to check me in for didn't match the ticket, but this was only when they were the same day.

So it wasn't an erroneous/extra UA segment, it was an extra LH one. And as I said they were finally able to delete it.

mherdeg

Glad this worked. Did you have subsequent segments on LH? If not, seems like maybe not as huge a deal.

villox

Yes. There are 7 more segments (4 TG, 2 LH, and 1 UA). The last UA one isn't on there anymore but I know that's not really important since it shows on UA's.

As soon as the agent deleted the segment (which I verified on LH.com), it also went missing from the TG site, which makes sense since it's the same PNR.

I just feel a lot better knowing that there's no risk that LH will cancel due to no show on the outdated segment.

gusd

Well, the difference is that now you're checked in, so since your first segment is on LH, they took control of your reservation once you've checked in with them. Probably that's why they were now able to do it, and were not able to previously.

Safe travels.