findark

It is (was?). Expanded Saver Economy availability is the benefit which was never published - last-seat in all cabins is the official benefit.

BThumme

I'm trying to change the last leg of my excursionist trip from ORD-DTW to LGA-AZO. If I go into my ticket and try to change it, the LGA-AZO flight I want doesn't show up (9am-137pm). If I try to book a standalone award ticket, it shows up no problem. Not sure if this is excursionist related or not, just thought it was odd and a bit frustrating.

jsloan

Not per se, no. What you're seeing is a reflection of the fact that flight changes use a different system than new bookings do. Behind the scenes, I think it actually searches for a new itinerary using the flights you've already flown, or something strange like that.

You'll likely need to call to make that change.

petes

To futher illustrate this, today I was trying to book saver award inventory on a one way from Seattle to Newark. There were many saver (12.5K mile) award itinerary's available routing SEA-SFO-EWR, but in all cases they had 4 hour on longer layovers. The more logical ~1 hour connecting options were available for 31 or 32.5K miles. But the exasperating thing is, in several cases both flights that made up a logical ~1 hour connection also appeared in the first or second segment of an available 12.5 mile award, but never both.

This is confusing, so case in point:
12.5K miles will get you this (>4 hours layover)
UA 698 SEA-SFO 9:55AM-12:14PM
UA 213 SFO-EWR 4:15PM-12:48AM

Or 12.5 miles will also get you this (over 5 hour layover)
UA 368 SEA-SFO 6:00AM-8:02AM
UA 2239 SFO-EWR 1:15PM-10:04PM

But if you want to do what you would just have done if you bought the ticket with money and take the two flights that give you the one hour layover (below) its 31K miles.
UA 698 SEA-SFO 9:55AM-12:14PM
UA 2239 SFO-EWR 1:15-10:04PM

There are numerous other situations like this I've noticed. Every other 12.5K mile routing available in this search had the long layoevers, while the 1 hour ones were all priced at 31 or 32.5k miles Why do we have to endure a 4 hour layover to get a saver award inventory? I did try to call and have them do this manually and they say they used to be able to do this, but not any more.

So it seems to me that its just a ruse to make you use more miles up if you dont want to sit around at the airport for 4 hours or more, how does this make sense....come on United,...

PS. I can book that 1 hour connection using the multi-leg search, searching for SEA-SFO, then SFO-EWR for 22.5K miles, yet another example how this makes no sense!

fumje

Actually I think findark explained what's going on pretty clearly in response to your earlier observation (bolding mine):

Basically they want your journey to cost 31k-32.5k, but there is a bug that means you can get it for 12.5k if you accept the long layover.

(And on another note, complain too much about this and it might be fixed — just not the way you want!)

BThumme

But it sure will be spun like we do. "Hey, we want to help you get where you're going, faster then ever - no more long layovers!" Maybe even market it against AA's awful, awful connections (very frequently overnights) on award tickets

tods27

Interesting on the long layover "bug". I wonder if I hit this on an international award that gave me a saver J award (domestic leg in Y) that has a 7 hour layover in ORD. Of course, I'm planning on trying to get that connection reduced if there is a schedule change.

jacquespluto

I'm trying to book the following saver J award.

UA/TK
MFR-DEN-IAH-IST-BUD

Using the search, I'm able to find saver J availability on both of these segments: MFR-DEN-IAH-IST and then IST-BUD. The layover in IST is 1:25 and both flights are on TK so that shouldn't be an issue. It sounds like this might be a case where even though there is availability, the search function is not allowing to book the full MFR-DEN-IAH-IST-BUD on one saver award.

From reading this thread, it sounds like the suggestion is to book MFR-DEN-IAH-IST and then call to see if IST-BUD can be added within 24 hours. Has anyone had success for a similar situation involving partner award availability?

The other option would be to try to book as excursionist perk with IST-BUD as my free leg and then booking a US domestic flight as my last leg. I did try this as well using the search and it wouldn't show J availability for MFR-DEN-IAH-IST.

findark

Yes, but it's difficult. I recommend framing it as a change of hear as to your destination, and be prepared to HUCA (never escalate requests like this).

jsloan

It may also help to have status with United, although there's no reason not to try it as a general member. Just remember that you have 24 hours to cancel for a full refund, if you're not able to get an agent to help.

I would not try to call to get an agent to do MFR-IST / IST-BUD / SFO-MFR or something like that. They're likely to refuse on the grounds that it seems abusive, even though it's technically within the rules. Sadly, it's not uncommon for multi-city search to return fewer results than one-way searches.

PVDtoDEL

Have you verified that IAH-IST-BUD is available? TK is pretty heavy handed in their use of married inventory..

BThumme

I got chewed out by a supervisor who said I wasn't going to be allowed to fly and my ticket needed to be cancelled. Here's what I had booked:

IAH-ORD-MBS

INN-FRA (the excursion)

(the immediate next day) ORD-DTW (originally, I wanted to change this to LGA-AZO).

I was told since I wasn't flying to Europe, my excursionist portion was not allowed, I should not have been allowed to book it, my ticket wasn't valid (I had an eticket number and everything). This was with a supervisor.

So not too happy about that, as I didn't want my ticket cancelled, but it has been.

As a point, I found out the issue (on my own) - there appears to be something with the timing. The flight I wanted for INN-FRA was 1025am-noonish. I found if I moved that flight up to 6am, the LGA-AZO flights I wanted then showed up. Or, if I moved the INN-FRA flight back a day, that also worked. So it looks like the system had some type of time feature between the legs that needed to be accommodated.

jacquespluto

IAH-IST-BUD is not available. Isn't the married inventory issue the opposite where the full itinerary is available, but not each segment? So IAH-IST-BUD available, but IST-BUD not available?

jsloan

You escalated a question about an itinerary like that?

It was never UA's intent that bookings like you described be allowed, even though they are within the rules. It's too late now, but if I had known the full situation, I would have included a warning originally.

If your ticket has been cancelled, you may have recourse with the DOT, but that may just make things worse. UA is likely to say it was an "error," which they've used successfully to get out of ticketing obligations in the past, and then put more energy into changing the rules to disallow what you're trying to do.

I'm surprised it's that sophisticated. I would have expected it to let you book anything that didn't overlap.

BThumme

No worries on it. I was reading about the excursionist perk on a couple very prominent travel blogs, that flat out recommended it. I thought it was well within the rules. I even went over the rules line by line and didn't see anything against it.

That's what even made me consider it. But with that said, FRA-INN is only 8k miles, and I don't even need the last part of an award ticket, so it's not a big loss.

It may have been discussed here before, these are the currently displayed rules from https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...vel/types.html:

From what they've said, they need a disclaimer on point two that says the origin and destination of the free ticket must be within the same region that is the destination of where travel originates.