What does NON_PREFERRED_CABIN mean?
 

Just booked an award to/from China, and the outbound flights have an odd notation on the confirmation. The outbound portion of the award is Mixed Class (economy SFO-YVR and business YVR-PEK). On the confirmation there's an exclamation point in a circle (usually used to indicate things like "Overnight Flight" or "Long Layover") with the text NON_PREFERRED_CABIN for both flights. What does that mean, and why would it be on the second flight as well, which booked into Business (I) on a two-class AC aircraft (I hope). (Unfortunately seat assignment was not offered during booking on the non-UA flights.)

http://www.postmodern.com/imagewell/non_preferred.png

Looks like a bug. As long as the booking class is for I you will be in business class on Air Canada. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Don't trust anything you see on united.com on the weekends. That's when United alpha-tests their site on live customers, so you get things like regional jets flying to Asia and messges like you're seeing. I'd wait until Sunday night before being concerned about any strangeness you see - it's usually cleared up by then.

I have seen that notice show up on paid itineraries with no mixed cabin, no alternative cabin requested (all economy). I think it can be ignored.

What does NON_PREFERRED_CABIN mean?
 

My guess is it has to do with the both segments being flown as "business" as opposed to "BusinessFirst" which is UAs name for business. So probably largely semantics in this case.

HA! Well, they have to get them there somehow!

Ultimately, it's probably because you booked a Business Class award with a segment in Coach, but those internal codes are not supposed to be exposed.

Being a programmed myself, it looks like it's just a string for which there is no English customer text coded. As the United app/website is offered in many languages, the backend code uses strings like these which then get replaced in the customer's language at the time it is rendered to the customer.

The reason why there's no English text coded could be multiple:
* Actual bug like mentioned above (for example, the recognized string is NO_PREFERRED_CABIN instead of NON_...)
* New feature, forgot to add the English text
* File with English text could not be read (technical error, or file is deleted, or file was being modified at the time, or wrong permissions, ...) - probably not the case since the other strings were correctly replaced
* A situation they considered would never occur, and hence they never bothered to add the text for it.

I think, like mentioned above, that the cause is the first flight in Economy while you requested Business. You can then use your mind to replace the string yourself.

You could try changing the language and see if the text appears in the other language. But the chances are slim, since English is UA's main language. This would be more of an option if this actually happened on a Spanish or French setting and you changed it to English.

I saw this on an itinerary for PDX-EWR a little while back. It was just on the itinerary e-mail, not the receipt e-mail or the website. It was a paid ticket, all economy, so must be a glitch of some kind.

By the way, just in case anyone is still following this, my current trip is SFO-DEN-LNK-DEN-SFO, and I saw a cheap F fare and snagged it. This is a regular paid ticket, but is "mixed cabin" since the DEN-LNK-DEN legs are in single-cabin CRJ200s. And again, all four legs have the notation NON_PREFERRED_CABIN, even the two in F on mainline metal (fare class A). As predicted, the notation was meaningless and it was a perfectly normal F flight. Just a bug I guess as predicted above.

I'm still following.

Just booked award tickets:

SAN-ORD Economy
ORD-IST Business
IST-LJU Business

VIE-IAD Businesses
IAD-SAN Economy

All three flights on the first leg have the NON PREFERRED CABIN notation. The return doesn't have it, even though it's "Mixed Cabin" as well.

Sounds like others confirmed this was a glitch, and not surprised it's not fixed.

This just popped up for me, in the case where I booked an M fare which was eligible for a 1K Instant Upgrade but the upgrade was not applied. (This is a trip with an international segment connecting to a domestic segment.) The international segment is also annotated "Not eligible for upgrade" which is incorrect; I've applied for a PlusPoints upgrade for that segment.

So, seems like a glitch. I would guess it indicates that the M fare booked "prefers" J cabin, but J is not currently assigned.

This only has appeared on the purchase confirmation receipt -- I can't find it anywhere else in the system.

this is absolutely true. source: programmer too.

OP should report it to
https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...bugbounty.html
ASAP. you might get some free miles :)

Miles only for site security errors, not UI errors
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...00-points.html

This same thing happened to me!
 

I'm still following, as well! This just happened to me. I booked a one-way award ticket Business Class trip on UA for next fall. JAX-ORD-YVR-BCN. 1st leg is economy on UA. 2nd leg is economy on UA. 3rd leg is Business class on AC. I had the exact same wording on my confirmation email as above. Am I going to have problems with luggage and lounge access in ORD or YVR? Appreciate the input.