WineCountryUA

Yes, this has been observed by others, it is "defect" (intentional or unintentional) of the new award search engine.

Unfortunately, there is little one can do about this. You can try to get the agent to contact the Price Desk but most say they have been instructed not to.

jsloan

In this particular case, I've been suggesting that people call in. While you can no longer put together an itinerary connection-by-connection, it's been my experience that what agents see when you call is the unfiltered one-way inventory. I wouldn't be surprised if this one could be booked by an agent, especially if you gave the specific airport code, even if it's part of a bigger itinerary.

OP: You can also just go ahead and book your trip as one-ways. There are two main drawbacks -- the first is that if you have to cancel, you'll pay two cancellation fees. The second is that you can't use the Excursionist Perk to get a free one-way flight in another region during your trip. However, if you were intending just to fly round-trip to Milan, that may not be a big deal. The advantages, besides not having to call the desk and hope they see the flight you want, include being able to change one leg, if necessary, without having to worry about messing up the other leg. This has become a real problem with partner flights, because UA seems to require that there still be award inventory available on your return flight even if you're not changing it. It's as if they're booking a new ticket behind the scenes and then canceling the old one.

threeoh

I was able to solve this problem by:

(1) Book the one-way

(2) Call within 24 hours to add the return.

As long as you can see the availability for each direction with a one-way search, this has worked for me.

LAX UA

GOOD GRIEF! What a time-consuming debacle to try and add/change a leg to an existing award booking. Per new UA policy I am now told you cannot change a flight/add a new segment to an award ticket unless all the other segments you want to keep are available to re-book as a new ticket on the day you make the change (that rarely is the case!). That is absurd ! Each year I book several long-haul international premium cabin award bookings that I secure many months in advance - often 1 or 2 legs are not yet available, or a connection has to be later fine tuned. Adding/changing a segment was never a problem before and is supposed to be one of the perks of having top status. Now it is impossible unless you can find a 1K phone agent willing to break the rules - and when I have - it is an hour long phone call to make a simple add-on or flight change that I use to be able to do myself online without having to re-book and re-find all the other segments again like starting from scratch. Several 1K agents have revealed to me this "new system" is hell for them, too. This almost makes it impossible to secure long haul premium award tickets way in advance that involve connections or multiple partners because often some legs are released while others do not come available to much later. Is anyone else finding this "new system" atrocious and a major road-block to trying to book award tickets?

pushmyredbutton

It’s been this way for a while. And it sucks.

Kacee

Much discussed in other threads.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...2017-a-88.html

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...-1-2017-a.html

The value of MP (and UA status) keeps dropping.

TonyBurr

ANOTHER wonderful "benefit" from UA. Somehow they will spin it that they are just "listening to, and responding" to the customer. This present leadership is going the way of Smisek.

kittiyut

What if you have a one-way award that goes aaa-bbb-ccc and you want to just take out aaa-bbb and keep bbb-ccc, is that going to be a nightmare to do as well?

Kacee

Yes because the ticket will have to be reissued.

Not an issue if it's all UA metal.

Jimmie Jet

callmedtop

Have a confusing one for you guys. I want to fly:
HKG-MUC-FRA-ORD in LH F

Right now, only HKG-MUC-ORD, with MUC-ORD in UA F or LH C, is showing up in the results. However, MUC-FRA-ORD on LH F is available if searching separately.
I'd like to book that HKG-MUC-ORD (LH F, LH C), and then switch MUC-ORD (in LH C) to MUC-FRA-ORD (in LH F) over the phone/online.

I know that in order to make a change to a segment, all segments need to be available. In this case, there are actually TWO seats available on HKG-MUC. Does this mean that the agent would be able to make the change?

Thanks!

jsloan

Likely not -- at least, not without paying nearly twice as many miles -- but you can ask. If a routing doesn't appear on a search from origin to destination (HKG-ORD, in this case), UA will price it based upon the searches that you have to do to piece it together. So, in this case, you'd probably be charged for HKG-MUC + MUC-(FRA)-ORD, separately.

coolbeans202

A recent data point: I just had an itinerary (IAD-FRA-JNB-CPT) that I was able to change online to IAD-JNB-CPT, even though there was no new inventory on the JNB-CPT leg. The system let me keep my original segment. In fact, I checked almost daily for a couple of months and routinely saw all kinds of different options pop up that let me keep various legs intact, even though there was no new inventory for those flights. I know we try to shy away from online changes, but I've had luck doing it that way while keep certain segments and changing others, even with the new system in place.

Kacee

Are you sure it's ticketed properly? That can be an issue with online changes.

callmedtop

Fair enough. If I want to give a try to see what happens, what has greater likelihood of success to ultimately change to HKG-MUC-FRA-ORD (all LH F)?

HKG-MUC-ORD (with MUC-ORD in UA F)
HKG-MUC-ORD (with MUC-ORD in LH C)

Benefit to second option it is has no UA segments and is all LH, while the first option is entirely in F already. Not sure if it really makes a difference but want to maximize my chances of success with a phone agent or even potentially the online change engine.