Taoyuan

Same here. I've seen it in X, but not particularly frequently.

Taoyuan

So I have a question about an award booking in saver J:

JFK-TPE 05MAR18 on BR31,
TPE-ICN 06MAR18 on TG634
ICN-SYD 06MAR18 on OZ601

I was looking at NYC-SYD and found that offered. Refreshed the page a few minutes later and it was gone. Yet, if you search individually, all 3 of those are there.

Is the inventory gone or am I doing something dumb?

jsloan

If you can find it by searching the three legs individually, the inventory is still there. However, United's award search is, to put it bluntly, awful. It appears to work by setting a timer, looking at only the results that come back from the database before the timer expires, sorting them in some proprietary fashion, and then returning only the top 200 of those.

If I search from JFK with those dates, I see those flights, but it's a mixed cabin itinerary, with economy from ICN-SYD. In this case, it might be worth your time to book that and then call United within 24 hours. Tell them that you didn't realize that the ICN-SYD flight was in economy, and ask if there's business class space on that leg too.

As crazy as it sounds, they may not be able to make it work. But I'd say it's worth a shot. If it fails, since you're still within the 24-hour period, you can cancel for a full refund.

I was mistaken -- I didn't notice that the search results were actually the 12:20 AM March 6th departure.

So, unfortunately, for now, the best advice I can offer is to wait and hope that those same results will come back. Perhaps some other flight will lose availability and this one will pop back into the list as a result.

I miss the old system. :-(

Good luck!

Taoyuan

It's back now. Scary how some great and totally legal routings are getting hidden.

747FC

This is the new normal.

IntFF

I booked a UA award on Lot (Biz, International). At end of booking UA site cannot select seats.
I tried to access reservation on Lot site with Last name + Confirmation number that United gave me. But it is not recognized.
Any way to select seats Online without calling Lot ?

Update: Now when I went to reservation on UA (my acct) it shows also eTicket numbers and seats.
But how do I change the seats?

Wooglin

Are you using the correct Lot confirmation number? It's different from the UA Reservation Number.

UA website should show you what the Lot confirmation number is via the Manage Reservation screen.

RNE

At the risk of stating the obvious, strike while the iron is hot. You have 24 hours to "unstrike" the iron.

747FC

Some things are just easier to do with a phone call. The UA site or UA telephone reps can give you the LOT record locator. Then call LOT and ask them to assign a seat. It is really very easy.

Kacee

+1
Or OP can just call LOT. They can locate the reservation based on passenger name and flight number.

Alternatively, the UA confirm will likely pull up the reservation on the LH website.

One issue that OP may be encountering is that the Amadeus software utilized by LH Group carriers typically requires the first and middle names be entered together when searching for a reservation, e.g., "smith, johnjames."

Grace B

Or just use their Facebook page, as I did, request a particular seat, and get a pleasant response within 1/2 hour.

Hadrian35

To put it bluntly, I get flights disappearing and reappearing hour to hour so it's absolute garbage and worse, it lies. To top it off they've taken all power away from agents to help customers.

Taoyuan

In this case, since the first flight was at 12:20AM, I figured out that it worked reliably for the day before -- I guess there were fewer results, at least back a few days ago -- since the site will show the following day at 12:20AM anyways.

But totally hear you and agree.

freppa87

I'm looking for 2 EWR-MCO (preferably, but any destination in Florida within 3-4 hour drive is ok) saver award tickets for 2018-03-30 or 2018-03-31. Right now I can't find a single award ticket around those dates to Florida. What do you think are the odds of such tickets appearing? Any routing is fine really.

I'm booking through Scandinavian Airlines Eurobonus points.

adambrau

While it doesn't seem like the new Mileage Plus changes are too drastic, although fees seem to be creeping up for various elite levels.

Has anyone noticed that finding award availability has recently gotten tougher, even close in to travel date? In order to keep my GS level I rarely use award mileage for trips and just use them for my (poorer) friends to come join me on a trip or visit me. However, I'm still trying to take one of the 2 last HKG-SIN tags at the end of October. I bought a W fare one way EWR-SIN and upgraded with a GPU, but coming back I decided I might as well use miles. I was searching around last night and before I knew it the clock indicated it was 4am! Getting from Singapore to Newark (on United.com let alone the trip!) took hours, and even though I found a First Class Saver on ANA from Haneda to JFK I could not find a great way way to connect from Singapore or Bangkok or Hong Kong or Taipei for a 10am departure flight out of Haneda. All the intra-Asian connections I could see like TG, OZ, BR, and ANA had A) only Economy offerings or B) awful routings and usually it is pretty easy to find a way to Tokyo. I was just gonna buy a ticket to get to connect and then I decided no get yourself into bed and just wait a few weeks. From Singapore to JFK I did find TK to Istanbul and onward to Cairo and then Egypt Air onto JFK for 80k miles in Business. I have traveled around the Middle East and Afghanistan but I still have a hard time reconciling MS in head. Likewise Air China has plenty of availability in First Class from PEK to JFK/EWR but I am not doing an intra-Asian connection via the PRC due to the delay factors for ATC.

Similarly I have been having trouble getting intra-Europe routes via miles for one of my best friends who is an impoverished Educational wonder. She lives near Malaga which is not huge *A territory but since we have very good mutual friends in Amsterdam I could always find something on LX or LH for her to come up and join me. In the last months there are very few 5 hour total travel time trips on either LH or LX.

Ironically, United now seems tougher to find Saver Premium seats than LH/LX/ANA.

LONG STORY SHORT ~ curious - anyone think/find United may have pulled Saver inventory in the last month or so as they prepare for the dynamic pricing thing in November? I really noticed Saver Award connection offers are crappier (longer like only 10 hour trip lengths from say AMS-FRA-AGP) that in the past would be a max of 5 hours? And that there is less Saver Award availability in general? I could understand this might be a proactive move on UA's part - might even see it as a sign they are trying to provide their customers with a better (bug-less) interface upgrade (I'm dreaming I know - see my last paragraph below but I seem to be wasting a lot of time on the same stuff that previously I whipped through.

So hear this. I realized I was talking to a 'fake' GS phone rep the other day who insisted UA had changed the rules on GPU's and we would all now need 2 systemwide upgrades in each direction when flying USA to SIN on UA metal. I nearly choked. I had applied a GPU to my el-cheapo $600 W fare EWR-ORD-HKG-SIN oneway ticket online but the HKG-SIN segment didn't get waitlisted (or rather clear). I scolded the agent for not knowing the rules and asked for a supervisor who fixed the problem after being on hold for 20 mins. Of course 2 days later I then changed the ticket for a day earlier and when I went back to reapply the GPU the 3rd segment didn't pick it up either. When I called in I was happy to get connected to 'Comfort' who is my favorite agent - no BS no unnecessary chit chat - she just knows how to get things fixed fast thus avoiding the 30 minute calls to clean up basic booking mysteries. The whole online GPU process has been buggy all summer - even thought it is not exactly a new customer benefit by any stretch of the imagination!

It's such a love hate relationship with United, lol. They always save the day but sometimes it's comes down to the last second.

Adam