mphall

I want to go from BNA to Berlin. When I price the coach fare, I get some decent times and flights. If I try to book business class, the website sends me from Nashville to Chicago to Newark to Berlin. Weird

Also, if I want to pick and choose which flights I could go premium coach, is there a way to do this? I find the website hard to use. However, will I have more clout booking with United website if something goes wrong with reservation and flights enroute or is that an old baby boomer idea. Thank you.

transportprof

United's web site is like a Rubik's cube. If you have hours to tinker with all the different permutations and combinations, you can get a real sense of accomplishment in puzzle solving.

Why not try the multi-city booking function and input the exact same connecting cities and dates that your coach fare search yielded, which you apparently liked, and then set the fare selector to Business for each segment?

As for having more clout with United, unless you are Global Services, there really isn't anything one do that will get one consistently more clout.

When you fly UA, you often have to rely on the kindness of strangers, to quote Blanche Dubois.

mphall

Good idea, thanks. It seems like a website designed 15 years ago. It's not friendly at all.

WineCountryUA

The site defaults to cheapest flights. You either go into advance flight search and select "schedule" vs cheapest. Also you can force the routing you prefer by using Multiple Destinations option, but these will both likely lead to more expensive flights.

UA does not have premium coach and you can not usually book other airline premium coach on the UA online site. (Not impossible on the phone but many agents will fail)

UA does have Economy Plus and you book that as if it was a regular Economy seat and then add E+ access as an additional fee (likely around $200 each way for USA-Europe).

If you want premium economy on another carrier, best to book directly with that carrier.

the beta of the new site has been released for volunteers to test, so it is likely to change later this year. Some like the present site, some hate it.

mduell

Don't bother with UA.sux's flight search, it's broken and will not always return the results you want even when you try to nail it down with the meager options it provides.

ITA software, hipmunk, and google flights all provide better searching interfaces, and some of them can drop you into the UA.sux booking process after you pick your flights.