jsloan

I am quite confident that UA hasn't reduced saver award availability on AMS-FRA-AGP, since UA does not fly AMS-FRA or FRA-AGP, and there is no such thing as saver/standard for partner awards. And I don't see what it would have to do with the upcoming everyday awards; whatever incentives they would have to limit saver availability so people will use everyday awards already exist with the standard awards.

Furthermore, as a GS, UA award space shouldn't be too big of a concern, because you can get them to open space for you in many cases (Saver economy if T>0; saver business if R>0; companion tickets with the purchase of a paid ticket, subject to certain conditions) and you can use your GPUs on award tickets. And UA doesn't control partner award space.

adambrau

1. Looks like there are column categories for distinctions between saver and standard business class in Europe, but on the attached flight date all business class was saver. But the connections being offered are getting worse, I can promise you that.

2. I just don't have the time to retake Alegerbra >< so I've never done that

3. Most of my tickets are in United Business but now that it's tougher to find Global First seats I am just trying to help my hubby use up his GPU's before YE. Hence my W class 600 dollars o/w fare to SIN which will almost earn 11k BIS was too big of a deal to pass up.

4. Not sure who controls partner inventory but in 10 years I have never had an issue getting (pretty much always my friend Cath) tickets that didn't involve more than a 5 hour flight with connection. So the example I attached here shows the fastest as 5:55mins but you go down the page and the 2) is 7+ and the 3) is 10 until you get to the bottom and its 26 hours in which case she might as well take a bus

5. I am quite sure most frequent posters here (of which I am not one) remember that UA's last two itoa Europe routes were LHR - AMS and BRU when the 777/767 would never have more than 10 passengers. Hopefully they made some money by plying these routes from the lease or sale of these London slots because I can't imagine the operational margins were too high.

6. I will admit that my hypothesis of UA taking out some award inventory and beta testing it before November's launch could be a load of crap. But given how little we know about UA's IT Capex and Commitment and the weakness of the main revenue generating 'cash register', hindsight we do have. The success or lack thereof of past enhancements (and Dr Dao and dead rabbits) makes me feel management are doing a little beta testing prior to launch. And employee training. Unlike the migration from Apollo to Shares which was of course pure Smisek genius and Oscar seems a bit less arrogant and certainly more genuinely committed to getting the ship rowing in the same direction all-together. Dynamic pricing is probably a pretty simple add to the rest of the customer facing systems which have been cobbled together over several years where literally every penny did count. I am not a conspiracy theorist, I promise.

7. Ironically, UA Saver Awards seems much more difficult to find in Int'l Premium cabins until a week out from date of flight, than those of it's partners, and UA decides how transparent it wants to be in showing partner saver award inventory.

Adam

jsloan

The columns exist, but the awards don't. Actually, what you're seeing is fairly rare; normally, I see the opportunity to pay for the award at either the saver or standard level. When combined with a UA leg, it makes sense -- the availability on the UA leg controls whether the overall award is saver or standard. When it's not, it's just confusing -- the website offers the same product for two different prices and invites you to pick.

Well, you have five hours to look for availability, but not 5 minutes to activate expert mode? The easiest way for a GS to get an award ticket in UA J is to look for a flight where there is availability in both T and PN classes, then call, have them open space for an Economy Saver award, and then apply a GPU.

Alternatively, if you find a flight where R > 0 -- which is much less common -- you can get them to open space for a Business Saver award instead.

I agree; prices to/from SIN in W have been fantastic recently.

It's a combination of two things -- partner availability and United's routing logic. Unfortunately, as of last October, they handcuffed the award system significantly, so that it's no longer possible to piece together awards. Now, the system will do a search and return whatever it finds -- and if you don't like it, tough. And if you find availability on some route it didn't consider, great -- but it's going to charge you by pricing it as multiple awards. I'd like to think that GS agents would be empowered to do the right thing and override the system, but it sounds like that's not the case.

I just think you're attributing it to the wrong thing. I think you're just now noticing problems that are tied to the older change. Everyday awards will only apply to UA metal, so, again, not an issue for intra-Europe flights. And, as a GS, you have the other options I mentioned to avoid paying the everyday prices.

Without a doubt, UA has decided that it wants to sell seats in the forward cabin, not give them away for mile redemptions or (especially non-GS) upgrades. I'm not certain how effective that strategy will be for them in the long-term, but I don't think there's much denying it in the short term.

akcae

Non-saver availability isn't shown as this is a route that UA does not operate. Standard (double) award level is only offered on UA-operated flights.

Paulchili

I have noticed significant changes in award availability in the last 2 or 3 weeks.
Soon I will need to book J awards from SFO to TXL for Sept '18. I have been watching/monitoring this route for the last 2 months with plenty of awards with both UA (via MUC) and LH (via FRA). In the last 2 weeks I see nothing (or almost nothing) for J awards and was wondering myself as to what happened or changed. If anything, it should have gotten better since there should be less demand for Sept travel to Europe than there was for July/Agust when I saw plenty of awards.
Any insight?

Duke787

Well well well. Guess what award spot is suddenly showing on .bomb again after the devaluation: SQ

Same restrictions as always (only intra-Asia for J, only Y for long-haul) but it is there so that is one big bright spot from the UA/SQ earning devaluation.

Kacee

September and October are IME the most difficult months for J awards to Europe.

Summer is tourist season and that's actually very low J demand.

Jetstreamer

I just had a schedule change on a UA award on O6 (Avianca Brazil). It was just a minor time change but the flight number did also change. I accepted the change on UA’s website but I can no longer access the reservation on the O6 website. I think the ticket needs reissuing as the eticket record still shows the old flight number and times (and same ticket number).

Can UA usually be relied upon to reissue tickets automatically in these scenarios? It has only been 48 hours since I noticed the change and I accepted it and travel is not until December. Should I give them time to do it in their own time or is it usually a case of if it hadn’t been done straight away it will never be done?

If I need to call, which department is best to get it done as pain free as possible?

Thanks.

gya007

Hi all,

I'm trying to book a couple of biz award tickets, SFO to PNQ on united.com. But I'm not able to get it end-to-end as available.

SFO to FRA shows up as available separately on LH. Then, FRA to PNQ (via DEL) LH / AI also shows up as available separately.

FWIW - Aeroplan (Air Canada) website shows me the end-to-end availability - but i don't have miles there. :-(

Tried to do Multi-city - but run into an error. Called the 800 number but the agent also said he can't put it together.

Are there any tricks I could follow here?

TIA

-G

jsloan

Even if you had been able to get it to come up with multi-city search, you likely wouldn't have enjoyed the result; UA is now charging multi-city awards on a point-by-point basis (i.e., it will charge you SFO-FRA + FRA-PNQ if you book it that way).

Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any tricks to get it to price as a single award. If you're willing to pay for it as two separate awards, you can just book the awards separately -- though you'd be faced with double the change fees if you ever needed to make changes. Otherwise, you need to keep searching (SFO to PNQ) and hoping that it will eventually link the flights together as a single award.

gya007

Thanks for your response...This isn't too much better than Aviana / Lifemiles then...it's all great until united.com can pull up your itinerary. if not you are screwed.

mikethe1

Hi,

I have ~75K award miles that I want to redeem for leisure family trip in the most straight forward way: Me flying on paid ticket collecting miles, other family members that anyway can't earn miles for my FFP will fly on award tickets. In total it's 4 travelers -> 8 tickets in total.

Here are my assumptions:

1. Full flexibility with time & destination.
2. I'm based in TLV so my choices by default limited - Short haul to Europe on *A. Can I do some tricky things like opening LH Miles & More, transferring the miles, then redeeming with LH and it will be more beneficial than just go to united.com and search for award tickets that anyway will be probably on same LH? Like it's nice to read bloggers doing some crazy tricks but in reality for someone needs one time redeeming process, without future plans, is it worth it?
3. With 75K it's possible to get 3 totally free tickets.
4. Does it matter if the award tickets are all one way or mixed like 1 traveler round-trip award?

Thanks,

Kmxu

I called 1K line to book an award ticket for AAA-CCC. The saver price is not available for this city pair. When I search AAA-BBB and BBB-CCC separately, saver award prices are available for the same set of flights. Why cannot UA make AAA-CCC at save price? Will multiple destination search help? Thanks.

findark

Just because A-B + B-C both have inventory does not mean that A-B-C also has inventory. You can "work around" this by exploiting a bug in multi-city search; however, for award travel this will cause it to price as two separate awards so it doesn't work anymore.

Kmxu

Thanks. I used the multiple destination search. It priced out as 22.5K miles plus $5.60 (saver award) vs. 25K miles + $5.60 (regular award).