gra2wish

I'm new to the Forum, would like advice on booking one-way FRA-IAH award seats in August 2017. I've already booked decent flights on the way over.

We are United MileagePlus Cardholders, but no status (don't prefer to actually fly United).

We need 5-6 tickets in Economy and have been hoping to get 30K nonstop from Frankfurt to Houston. Currently, all United nonstop awards are 65K, which I cannot do for my whole family. I haven't seen this before... maybe United is getting greedy(ier) or am I booking too early? I'm only looking for Economy seats.

Also, I've searched Lufthansa's website and don't see any Lufthansa flights to match what I'm looking for. Does Lufthansa release economy seats later than this?

In a perfect world, we would fly FRA-IAH nonstop on Lufthansa, rather than United, using United miles.

If anyone can advise, I would be very grateful. I don't want to lose the one-stop flights on United that are currently available for 30K, but was really hoping for something a little more appealing.

mduell

65k is the standard price, 30k is the saver price. Right now UA doesn't want to release any saver tickets. They could at any time between now and departure.

Book the onestop saver and waitlist for the nonstop by calling in. You can only waitlist for UA, not LH.

WineCountryUA

30K miles is the rate for Saver Economy which has limited number of seats available. 65K miles is the Standard Economy rate -- which has a greater availability.

Note you might what to check a smaller number to see if you can get some saver seats and the rest as standard. Also getting a MP credit may open up more saver inventory for you. Since you have a MP credit card, make sure you have logged into your account before searching, this may release additional saver inventory.


if you want to use MP miles you must book via the United site. You can not use UA MP on the LH site.

If you book the 1-stop route, you can change to the non-stop later but it will cost you $75 or $125 (if less than 60 days to travel) per passenger to change.

mahasamatman

Welcome to FT, gra2wish!

Are you searching for six seats in one shot? If you search for six, there could be as many as five Saver seats available and it will still quote you the higher rate.

As per the OP, that's already done.

gra2wish

Thank you both for the very quick replies - very much appreciated.

I had checked through MP and also searched for only one award seat, but no luck regardless.

Over the past year I had thought about taking this trip and saw a great deal of non-stop award availability for 30K, many of which were LH flights, so I was disappointed by what has been currently available.

In fact, LH has only sparse award seats from FRA-IAH - but some of the dates available are after my travel date of 8/6/17, so that seems worrisome. Additionally, LH is actually using United flights for the transatlantic part of the trip
This led me to hope that maybe once LH released more award seats I could get the flight I was hoping for.

Someone told me to check ANA website also, but no luck.

Duke787

I just searched for 8/6/2017 and on the first try saw multiple options including FRA - LHR - IAH for 30k (with 6 Y available) which is only ~3 hours longer than the direct.

It's booking into XN so if you have CC you should have access once logged in.

Maybe book that to have something and then pay change fee if direct opens up though honestly that routing is pretty quick and easy and finding 6 seats in the same routing is no easy task in any class.

It's on a UA 777 which is going to be roughly equivalent to LH in Y. Grab a row of 3 going up to the window plus the middle row of 3 seats in the middle section.

gra2wish

Thanks, Duke787. That is the flight I was considering booking, just was hoping for a nonstop and/or LH. I really, really don't like flying United - many bad experiences under my belt. So, I had planned long ago to try to book this as a LH flight.... just not able to make that happen right now.

WineCountryUA

There will be no extra credit card saver availability on LH operated flights and no standard award availability at all on LH operated flights.

Partner flights like LH are only available as saver awards.

mduell

That's completely meaningless and should not in any way be worrisome.

Huh? There are no codeshares on award flights.

gra2wish

The reason it concerned me is that perhaps LH has decided not to release award seats for the days I need. In other words, they have already offered the awards seats they intend to offer.



Sorry, I was referring to purchased tickets, in this case. A few days ago, LH had only LH flights "operated by United" or actual UA flight "X" as an option for transatantic travel (again, for paid tickets). Now there are a few LH flights there that can be bought for dollars. I was only looking at this option, however, as a way to look into availability on the LH flights and attempt to predict whether they would offer more award seats. I don't intend to purchase a ticket.

For award travel, LH still doesn't have a flight on the date I'm looking for (there are exceedingly sparse award flights during July/Aug). So, to get back to my original goal with this, I'm hoping someone might know whether LH tends to release award seats later (although they have already released some dates), or is this just too popular a time to fly and I should be happy with whatever I can get?

Duke787

I completely understand trying to avoid flying UA but I'm not sure taking the gamble of waiting to see if LH releases the seats is worth it here. Especially since this is a Sunday which means heavy leisure Europe to US travel for people going back home from their holidays (or heading to the US from Europe for a US summer holiday) and then adding the fact that you are trying to find 6 seats on the same flight.

Finding 6 seats (Y or J) during the summer months on the same flights is no easy task and this one is pretty easy. LHR is pretty straightforward for transiting *A. You'l arrive into T2A and depart from T2B.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, I'd take what was there and have it set.

lhrsfo

I do understand a reluctance to fly UA, but I genuinely don't think that UA is going to be worse overall than LH in Economy across the Atlantic. By far the most significant aspect will be the space accorded to each person, and it will be nearly identical (unless you are in E+ on UA when it will be much greater on UA). Whilst I prefer LH's catering and booze choices, they're not much better than UA's, which have improved markedly. Conversely, UA's IFE is better than LH's. LH might win the crew fight, but mostly because UA is so variable and you are more likely to get a bad one. But, for an eastbound TATL, the BIG deal is getting some sleep and UA will be just as good as LH on that front.

gra2wish

Thanks for the advice. I think I will settle with the United flights and hope all goes well. It will be good to stop stalking the airlines and wasting time, as well...

I appreciate everyone's insight.

mduell

Revenue tickets LH is selling on their website are completely irrelevant to award availability.

LH may open award space to partners at any time, or not. There's no public release schedule.