WineCountryUA

Is this a paid flight or award flight?
The IATA recommendation is for paid flights. Award flights must be ticketed by the issuing program/airline.

If you are asking about award flights, *A carriers do not release all their inventory to the *A partners, so it is not uncommon to not have access to all partner award flights.

As for phone agents and awards, what you see is what they see -- they have no additional access / inventory.

auorab

It is a mileage plus award booking.

Thanks for that clarification. I am dating myself, but years (and years) ago I remember calling in as all the partner availability wasn’t on United’s website.

I was just hoping there was some trick I was missing!

WineCountryUA

Piecing together awards has been gone for many years (without a price penalty). It it does not show up in the search list, then yo are out of luck.

Now the search list is long, so make sure it is not there by playing around with the sort options.

auorab

Thanks, I figured that was the case, but thought I would ask before giving up on it!

trvlr98765

I had an award ticket booked as XXX-YYY-ZZZ, all in I-class. I wanted to change the YYY-ZZZ flight to be a few hours earlier on a flight that had I-class availability without touching the XXX-YYY flight I had already booked. In the past, that was never an issue. But I just called, and they're insisting on repricing the entire XXX-YYY-ZZZ ticket, which is problematic since XXX-YYY only has X-class available, even though I'm currently holding an I-class seat.

Is this a new policy, or should I HUCA?

Thank you!

WineCountryUA

Are these partner flights than the answer is yes.

It has been UA policy for 4-5 years now due to some partners not honoring pre-existing booking on changes.

If UA booking, UA can make the change but with partners you are out of luck.

This is probably the #1 question in this thread!

michael_v

What if XXX-YYY is on UA and YYY-ZZZ is on a partner?

WineCountryUA

If the flight that is being changed is YYY-ZZZ and it has availability, then yes it is possible to get UA to change the ticket. Generally the willingness has been around responding to schedule changes and not voluntary changes. This will require some effort as a supervisor's approval is required. No guarantees on voluntary changes.

AustinPilot

Booking an award EWR-BOG-GYE, CUE-UIO-GPS, GPS-GYE-BOG-EWR (all in I), united.com correctly showed the prices as 35K, 0, 35K for each component, yet the total came out as 73.5K per person. Called, everybody agreed the price should of been 70K, but the computer insisted on 73.5K. They had to price it manually (40 minutes on hold), but it did not ticket. The following day (another hour on hold), the ticketing desk finally pushed it through...

cfischer

when is the flight? There is a 3.5k surcharge for close-in bookings. That usually shows on the confirmation page only and not with any of the segments.

AustinPilot

The flights are next summer, so it’s not the close-in booking surcharge (unless the computer is goofing).

ualboston1k

Hi Friends

I’m looking to book my family a trip to the UK for next summer. I’ve not booked an award trip since late 2018, and that was a trip entirely on LH. So I’m not as familiar with some of the award changes.

First off, searching the BOS-LHR leg it’s infuriating UA is pricing the new nonstop at higher prices than via a connection. Dynamic award pricing at work. It is what it is.

My main concern is the lack of *A award options listed in search results. It used to be, a year or so ago, all I saw were LH and LX results any time I searched an itinerary from BOS to Europe. But now it’s different. I only see UA and most flights are much more than 30K miles each way in XN. Most flights are 45-52K miles each way. There are no LH, LX, or any other partner flights.

Is UA restricting visibility to partner awards? I know *A coach awards to Europe are typically 30K miles. It seems like UA is intentionally not showing cheaper, partner awards and instead pushing folks to more expensive UA flights.

What tips do you have for me so I can see more *A options?

Thanks!!

N104UA

Partner availability is completely controlled by the partner airline, and as much as people think UA might be restricting partner award space that has never been an issue. If you want to confirm you can always check on the Air Canada website to confirm what the UA site is showing is accurate.

I am guessing LH and LX are not releasing partner availability for the same reason UA is increasing the pricing for their flights, most airlines believe that Summer 2022 will be the busiest North America to Europe travel season ever. Lots of factors here but mainly people haven't been able to travel for 2 years and many other destination options (Australia, NZ, Asia) aren't open for tourists yet.

It looks like all but 4 days in Summer 2022 I was able to find connecting flights at 30k Miles . If you book now there is a decent chance there will be a schedule change of 30+ minutes, which would qualify you to rebook on other flights, and you can then change onto the nonstop if that is what you are looking for.

As an aside, I was very surprised about the amount of business saver availability to LHR on AC via YUL and YYZ in May, July, and August (unfortunately June was not available), it seems to be 3+ seats on most days if anyone is looking for a good deal to Europe this summer.

blug

It seems for certain city pairs, the award search engine is configured to return nonstop and 1-stop results only.
Example: SFO-SIN and LAX-SIN. Although SFO-LAX-NRT-SIN and LAX-SFO-NRT-SIN are reasonable routings, they are never returned.
If I want SFO-LAX-NRT-SIN (because LAX-NRT has saver award), I guess the only way is to do a multi-city search for SFO-LAX/LAX-SIN, and pay the additional price for SFO-LAX?

dkc192

Yes, I am noticing this issue too, unfortunately. Even worse, on the same route, some days will return 0-2 stop itineraries whereas others will only return 0-1 stop itineraries. For example, for LAX-ZRH, Tuesdays seem to return 2-stop itineraries (e.g., LAX-ORD-MUC-ZRH), whereas Wednesdays return only 1-stop itineraries at a maximum (e.g., LAX-ORD-ZRH or LAX-MUC-ZRH).