Thank you.
Saver award. :-)
(1k, but likely not relevant here)
Will buy a cheap Alaska Air ticket as insurance. <<$100.

1K is relevant since XN is much more available than X. An SDC approach is likely to work here IMO.

Thank you.
I checked the ticket, it is actually BKK-ICN-SFO-SEA. That does not change the SFO-SEA situation, but brings me to a related question.
- in BKK, my SFO-SEA flight will be more than 24 hours out. I suspect I cannot SDC then?
- assuming I cannot, can you SDC on a flight segment while being en route/checked in on the itinerary?

Because you have checked luggage, you will probably not be able to SDC until you arrive in SFO. If you did not have checked luggage, there would be several points on the itinerary where an SDC would have been possible. Being checked-in isn�t the problem � having a bag attached to the reservation is. (Also, you can�t SDC prior to leaving BKK because you have a non-UA flight remaining on the reservation).

Can I combine two one way bookings for the purposes of getting the excursionist segment free? I'm hoping to avoid cancelling/rebooking as I'm not convinced all segments will return to inventory.

In general, no. If all existing segments are operated by UA, maybe, although policy would be to reprice.

A bit of a random one that I expect the answer to be no to, but I figured I would ask here. Right now, we are flying ATH-EWR with a stopover in Europe on a paid J ticket (3 passengers) in a few days. Is there any way, given this was booked as a RT, and we have flown the first leg already, to split the PNR, cancel 2 of the paid J tickets, and rebook those 2 as IN awards instead?

Bit out of left field, but figure I would ask and see if folks thought this might be possible as a way to arbitrage close-in award availability and save the future flight credit for another flight.

Of course, but...

... the problem is that the credit you'll have left over will be a partially-used ticket, meaning that it can only be used in conjunction with the already-flown segments. In practice, that's going to limit you to flights from ATH to EWR (or EWR to ATH -- whichever one isn't flown yet, which is unclear from your message). You might be able to substitute other cities on either side of the Atlantic, depending upon fare rules, but the presence of a stopover complicates that. You might be able to fly that last leg in economy and get a reusable flight credit for the difference, but, again, the stopover complicates that.

TL/DR: likely possible but there's a fairly decent chance that you'll be out both the miles and the cash.

Thanks. I figured it was a (very) long shot at best, but I figured I would ask. Moral of the story - should have checked alternate routings a few days prior to departure

I recently had an award flight leg canceled DEN-ZRH-BER-CPH all in (I) with the BER-CPH leg being canceled.

I was rebooked over the phone onto DEN-MUC-CPH, UA/LH. Much better routing and I prefer Polaris seats for sleep so I am not complaining too much! However the MUC layover is 5 hours and there are 2 valid direct connections earlier in the day. One on LH and one operated by AirBaltic. These where not available a few days ago when I was being rebooked. I would love to swap to one of these, but the agents cannot seem to find availability in (I) even though it shows up on the website, both as a single leg and entire itinerary. I have tried both via chat and calling. To further complicate things when I go to rebook it myself, the website shows -0 miles paid and $42.xx when the actual was 88k so even if I was able to find what I wanted I wouldn't be able to book it myself.

Am I barking up the wrong tree trying to get a slightly better itinerary? Would UA agents need to reprice the entire journey to change the connecting leg? Is this an issue of phantom space or a HUCA thing?

if you can find the entire itinerary for 88k on united.com with the flight out of MUC that you want, just call UA to re-book it. If they can’t do that for some strange reason and you have the extra 88k miles, just book a 2nd ticket. You have a couple of minutes until the dupe check will cause issues so if you get the ticket you want you simply cancel the other one.

And to piggyback on this: see if you can simply do a �change flight� on the UA website. Not all airlines offer that but it�s a nice feature bc means you don�t have to cancel, get back miles, rebook.

On the contrary, if you have sufficient miles and all necessary flights are available, I highly recommend the book-then-cancel approach. Using �change flights� can put you into a situation where you end up without a seat. It doesn�t happen every time, but it happens frequently enough that it�s a legitimate worry. Specifically, what happens is that UA sometimes does not push the updated ticket number through to the partner airline. When they revalidate that record at some future time, it�ll find the old ticket which is marked as having been exchanged for something else, and it�ll release the confirmed space. I�ve had this happen to me personally, and it happens with some frequency on the board.

The itinerary on the website prices out to 350k so seems like the entire thing would need to be re-priced. I tried going though with the change flight tool and rebooking, its gives the "This flight requires no additional payment" all the way to the last screen, then asks for 350k miles.

Thanks for the input though! I'll try once more via call and see if they can work some magic. Otherwise I'll just hang out in the lounge for 5 hours. No biggie!

Trying to book a flight between SBP-SGU which are both destinations served by United. I can find flights on Google Flights which link to United who will ticket them to me (I would assume). Since I'm trying to go next week and the tickets are relatively expensive, I thought I would check the price in miles. I can't find any flights between those cities for miles (or even money) when searching on the UA website for any dates. I also checked SBA just out of curiosity, and still no flights to SGU. Is there a reason for this?