Flamenguista

First time poster, great site. I have a question involving stopovers and business class. My itinerary will be:
RDU > Bangkok
Bangkok > Siem Reap
Siem Reap > RDU

I'm new to points and miles, so I was playing around with United miles booking and noticed something interesting. When it's a stopover, they halve the price for each leg. But they also show the different classes as options.

Ideally, what I would love to do is to split a stop-over between Business and Economy. So for the long part of the stopover, I want to fly business to Bangkok. For the short part, Economy to Siem Reap. And return economy to Raleigh. This would be taking advantage of a disproportional stopover and saving 20k of miles.

Raleigh to Bangkok as part of a stopover (40k Business Saver)
Bangkok to Siem Reap as part of a stopover (20k Economy Saver)
Siem Reap to Raleigh (40k Economy Saver)

When I try to book, It only allows me to pick 1 leg and then the error comes. But I don't know if the error is caused by something else or if I can't mix economy/business for the stopover.

Kacee

That's a display error. It has nothing to do with the stopover, it's because you're using the multi-city booking tool. The per-segment price you are seeing is erroneous and cannot be booked. The price for a business saver one-way to South Asia on a *A partner is 80K miles, and the round-trip is 160K. There's no way to discount those numbers.

Several possibilities. Most basic is that the website chokes on complex itineraries. Most of the time these must be called in to book.

Note you are also subject to segment/transfer limitations on that routing. You can have a max of four transfers each direction (outbound/inbound).

Flamenguista

Thanks

EmailKid

Not sure why you would get that message.

There's a whole threat in this forum about keeping miles alive. I believe the consensus is to buy magazine subscription via UA portal. I'd try that first, and/or ask in Keep miles alive thread.

I've done that with AA, and others have with UA (and others that I don't follow I'm sure).

JohnRain

Thanks EmailKid. I'm based in Europe and my guess is that the online shop is only available for people living in (North) America. For this reason magazine subscriptions aren't an option for me either. I'll try to find the thread about keeping the miles alive though, thanks for the tip.

EmailKid

I see.

Try donating miles.

Here's the thread.

JohnRain

Thanks EmailKid!

WineCountryUA

Lifetime status levels are exempt from other status requirements such as PQDs, minimum UA operated segments, ....

Lifetime 1Ks will receive the 6 GPUs (and RPUs) if not otherwise earned. The "not otherwise earned" is the key phrase. So if you fall short of earning 1K, you continue to be an 1K and receive the upgrades cert. However, if you earn 1K and receive those upgrade certs, you will not get a second set as Lifetime 1K.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...rt-2015-a.html

helvetic

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ad-merged.html

edgewood49

So all I have a question, it seems a wheel has come off at AS in the last six months or so and there are rumblings, one of which is me. Which begs me the question should I come back to UA? I already have Gold Premier through Marriott but can easily status match to PLT. I am in the NW and no issues with in and out of SFO or DEN.

So honest opinion ?

Thanks all

findark

You are allowed one free stopover on the award ticket. RDU-BKK-REP counts as a half round trip even with the stopover, so it is 80k miles in *A J or 40k in Y. As Kacee noted, the booking engine is a little misleading, in that it will show each segment at one half of the full RDU-REP price, although the segments cannot be booked separately at that price.

You should be charged the through fare for the highest class of service on any segment, so RDU-BKK-REP-RDU will always be at least 120k miles with a minimum of one segment in *A J, and 160k if both directions have J segments. So you could book the cabins you suggested, but it should price as 120k miles. The booking engine may have trouble doing this if it implicitly thinks BKK is the stopover and REP is the destination.

SeeBuyFly

I am sure the answer is here somewhere, but I didn't find it.

On the first day award bookings open (i.e. ~335 days out), when do the awards become available on united.com?

Since I'm booking for the busy early Jan 2017 period, I need to move quickly. I can see that, on preceding days, seats are being released before morning on the first day, but I don't know if it is exactly at midnight (of what time zone?) or some other time.

If relevant, this is for booking on TG connecting to NH.

Many thanks!

EmailKid

Short answer: No one knows.

Believe consensus is that awards can show up anytime, disappear anytime, or just not appear at all, depending on Revenue Management. And with partners it could be even more of a mystery.

SeeBuyFly

I do understand that awards are released at random, but I had a somewhat narrower question.

I can see the specific awards I want (but for previous days) appearing by morning each day, 335 days out. If an award actually appears on Day 1, which I understand is not guaranteed, does united.com start allowing bookings at midnight (Central) or after a few hours? In other words, should I stay up past midnight or wake up early?

EmailKid

Well, I had a couple of instances where award showed available, but unbookable (at the time). Called in, agent didn't even see it.

Waited, and couple of hours later I was able to book it.

So I would not get up in the middle of the night, but YMMV.