Berlin_traveler

I can tell you what happens. Had the same situation here in Berlin. UA flight was delayed for 24 hours, W class, so called the Premier hotline. They put me on a Lufthansa flight leaving later in Y class. Was automatically upgraded and received award miles and PQM of the new booked Y class. Of course, now I'm always hoping my UA flight is delayed!

BOSOGG

Question:
You book Business Saver or Business Standard Awards and get "Mixed Cabin" notice. One of the legs has no available Business seats, or, one of the legs is a single cabin flight.
Since you are booking Business, are you able to get assigned to Economy Plus at no additional charge? Assume no status that might qualify for EPlus.

jsloan

Sadly, no, although it certainly makes intuitive sense.

WineCountryUA

Nope, no complimentary E+. That is true for paid/cash tickets also. In the case of the single cabin case, you can try asking at the gate. YMMV

However, if there is a premium cabin but no space, consider doing this http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ns-issues.html

GayPMorgan

Is it possible to book a roundtrip flight and book one segment as an award ticket and the return as a normal paid ticket? I don't think it's possible online but I was wondering if a phone agent will be able to do it.


Also, are certain award segments limited to roundtrip flights and not available as one-ways? I found an award segment from DCA-MAD connecting in YYZ and flying J on the AC 789 but I can't seem to find the same segment when trying to book it as a one-way (October 26, 2017). Conversely, some segments that didn't show up when I was booking a roundtrip now show up when I'm booking a one-way.

jsloan

No. You can book two one-way tickets separately, but one-way fares can be extremely expensive. It is not possible to combine an award flight with a paid flight on a single itinerary.

No. However, the search engine has some significant limitations. The board's conjecture is that back-end queries to the inventory system are time-limited, and they seem to return different results for one-way vs. roundtrip travel.

If you can see the award via a simple one-way search, you should be able to call and include it as part of a round-trip award, and vice-versa. If you have to force it to appear using multi-city search, that no longer applies, and you can expect to be charged extra miles.

Ricecakes

Traveling United EWR-BRU-PRG in June for river cruise which included economy airfare. UA agent said booked in bulk fare, by river cruise firm, so he could not help me upgrade to business on EWR-BRU leg. Only option to pay for economy plus.
Any ideas on how can I use miles and $ to upgrade to business class? Ticket shows fare class L.

zoqfotpik

I recently got my UA Silver and was thoroughly happy with the benefits that came with it, albeit very basic. Priority screening, boarding, and most importantly Economy+ seats were all nice perks to have! I received my status through Marriott Plat and I don't think I would choose to credit mileage on UA again as my preferred program is Aeroplan. Would it be possible to use the elite benefits and then credit the flight to another FF program? I presume the only way UA can tell my status is if I add my membership number in the ticket, but then it automatically adds any earned miles to its own program. Anyway I can work around this?

WineCountryUA

Some bulk tickets are ineligible for upgrades -- by the fare rule. It is one reason they are highly discounted fares.

You can ask to pay the fare difference but some BULK tickets are not changeable and if changeable there will be a change fee.

The only real option is to go the E+ route (or purchasing a new ticket).

Yes but a bit complicated. Once you have your boarding pass, change the FF program (at the airport). The for the return, wait until the miles have posted, switch back to UA MP, get your return BP and then change to the other program.

zoqfotpik

I will try this on my next trip. Thanks!

764toHI

I'm scheduled to fly UA70 next week on a L fare and was wondering what would be the least (financially) painful way to change to a TATL flight departing later in the evening; wouldn't mind ending up in LHR and taking the train the rest of the way to AMS. I would assume hoping for a weather waiver is best but was wondering if there are other options I could try. No checked luggage if that helps.

LASNRT

Good evening!

I have just purchased a ticket with today's fantastic *A sales and will be traveling from Las Vegas to Madrid for $415 on UA and Swiss.

I purchased my ticket with Swiss.com and the ticket is on Swiss stock (724, not 016.)

I will reach United Gold Premier status later this year.

I can see my reservation on the UA site, but it doesn't show information about Mileage earning since I didn't buy it on UA.com.

The bookings are in K class for all flights, and according to the UA site K class on Swiss earns 50% mileage credit, plus a 50% bonus for UA Gold (which I'm taking to mean a total of 75% of the actual mileage - 50% bonus of the reduced earning).

My flights are:

Carrier Route Actual 50% bonus Total earned
UA LAS-SFO 414
LX SFO-ZRH 5841 2920 1460 4380
LX ZRH-MAD 772 386 193 579
(Sorry the website won't allow me to space this properly...)

I have the same reverse routing home.

Does that look right for the Swiss flights? My Twitter message to UA referred me to the generic website that shows their earning rates on Swiss...but they wouldn't give me exact numbers

Also, how is the UA flight calculated? It says on the website that flights operated by United, issued by "any airline" are solely calculated on fare. I don't care too much about the earnings on a 414 mile flight, but I'm curious to know how it'll be calculated. My receipt from Swiss doesn't break down each flight one by one, of course, so I'm not sure how they'll calculate it.

Thank you all for your time and help! I can't tell you how valuable the members of this site have been in helping all of us amateur & intermediate travelers!

WineCountryUA

The UA portion will be based on the allocation of the fare to the short segment. This is generally difficult to know in advance for a partner ticket where the UA portion is a minor part. If you can get the fare construction for the ticket you might get a hint --- but don't expect much.

getagb

On some days there's a later routing EWR-FRA-AMS (UA 960, UA 9163) that departs at 7:35 pm, connects in FRA, and arrives at AMS at 1:55PM. The least financially painful option would be to same-day change onto this routing ($75, or $0 if you're gold or higher). However, because UA 9163 is operated by Lufthansa it violates the same-day change rules and will likely require a very friendly agent (although there's one very old report of it working online).

If you can't swing that, whatever you decide to switch to will incur a change fee (probably $300, but check your fare rules or call) plus the difference in fare. This could of course get waived for IRROPS but don't count on it

findark

Yes, that should be correct. You will also earn 100% of the distance as PQM, and earn zero PQD and zero PQS for the LX segments.

Some portion of your fare (likely a very small amount - sometimes determined pro rata by distance) will be applied to the UA flight. You will earn that many PQD, and 8x that many RDM as a Gold.