ZH ticketing question
 

I'm on my third attempt to ticket SFO-ICN-PVG-XIY-ICN-SFO on UA/OZ/CA/ZH/UA respectively.

The first time, I was asked to wait 24 hours, but by 20 hours, the CA and ZH segments had vanished from the record. After calling in, the next agent tried again, but this time ZH (but not CA) was the problem. Waiting on the third go-around, and the agent suggested that if it didn't work this time, I should just buy PVG-XIY-ICN separately.

Has anyone had any success ticketing on ZH before? Any advice? Thanks in advance!

[looking forward to trying OZ, CA and ZH!]

Is this an award or revenue ticket? If revenue, and assuming that PVG and XIY are both stopovers, IMO you should have UA ticket SFO-X/ICN-PVG-ARNK-XIY-X/ICN-SFO as an open jaw, and buy PVG-XIY separately on Elong (elong.com) or C-Trip (ctrip.com) as a domestic oneway. This should work out to be cheaper also.

revenue ticket - thanks for the tip, sinoflyer. I'll look into that!

and just like that, the entire thing cancelled this time. Looks like I might be able to make SFO-ICN-PVG-ICN-SFO work and then buy PVG-XIY-PVG on elong/ctrip. Thanks for the advice.

Never realized that buying a ticket on Star Alliance partners could be so complicated! Used LH, BR, SQ, TG, TK, LX and NH without problems before. Didn't think CA and ZH would be any different!

I had a similar issue this week trying to book MOW-LON-xxx-LON, with MOW-LON on LX or LH and the LON-xxx-LON on UA metal, on United.com. I was first asked to wait 24 hours for the LX segment. When I received a further message that this was not possible, I called and was advsied this was not a valid itinerary. I tried booking instead with LH (similar timings), and received an error message. Concerned that availability would disappear and/or fares would go up, I booked the original itinerary on Expedia. When I went back to United.com to select seats, it turned out I had three duplicate bookings with the LH routing, but all indicating that booking could not be confirmed.

In the end I should have been less eager; about 30 hours after booking, the fare on United (including the same flights on Expedia) had dropped notably for similar timings through IAD instead of EWR, and AA was offering a similar LON-xxx-LON itinerary for marginally more in J.

In my case adding the MOW-LON segment actually reduced the price as compared to LON-xxx-LON alone, even with approx. 60 hours in London(I was legitimately starting in Moscow, though would ordinarily have booked separate tickets) so I was not eager to book separately.

I am mystified why the ZH segment (which I assume is XIY-ICN) would cause problems for UA to ticket the entire itinerary. I've taken an MP award containing a ZH segment before, so from first hand it's not entirely impossible for UA to issue a ZH ticket.

If you still haven't bought the ticket by now, perhaps go back to united.com and book the SFO-PVG/XIY-SFO open jaw again, price out the itinerary, but instead of purchasing, copy down the fare basis codes and call UA to have the agent book the same itinerary. They should be able to price that itinerary to match yours, but tell them that the PNR probably needs to be queued to the pricing department for the pricing record to be manually built in order for the ticket to be issued. This is certainly more complicated, but it might be worth a shot.

If you are just going with the SFO-PVG roundtrip (which is not a bad option either, IMO), depending on where you plan to be in Shanghai, you can also use SHA (Hongqiao) as an option to/from XIY.

Good luck!