Partner Award Flight Change... whew I made it back... I know this has been discussed before but never had it hit so close to home. Recently had a United Award Ticket in business (I) booked: MLE-SIN (on SQ), SIN-TPE (on BR), TPE-JFK (on BR). Because of a typhoon, EVA moved up the TPE-JFK flight to depart 2 hrs early (less than 24 hrs before departure) leading to a misconnect in Taipei. I tried contacting United before departure from the Maldives and was told because I had checked in online they could not touch the ticket but now "Singapore has control of the ticket and they will reticket you". At MLE, agent was not able to do anything "we're just a small airport" but agreed to check me in just to SIN. Was told "Ticket agent in SIN will be able to fix all the problems, no worry". Got to SIN and ran between terminals, found ticket agent who told me "It's a United ticket, we can't touch it". Contacted United again who said "we can't open up seats on a partner airlines" (which I knew) and agent offered to book me SIN-SFO-EWR on United with only Economy seats available. Luckily the SIN-TPE leg ended up not being canceled (actually on time despite the "need" to rebook the TPE-JFK flight??). Was able to see there were Polaris seats on TPE-SFO-EWR the next day and when I pointed that out to the United agent , they were able to grab that for me. Got home only 24 hrs late. I love planning travel and even I found this super stressful.

I guess my long winded question is... if the MLE-SIN had been canceled... somewhere United does not fly... what would have happened? Would Singapore have stepped up and rebooked me or would I be "up the creek" and have to buy a ticket last minute and pay for it myself? I wonder if I had just gone to EVA when checking in for the SIN-TPE leg, if they would have rebooked me on their direct to JFK the next day despite it being a United Award ticket.... Anyone with similar experiences?

The late-delivering / canceling carrier is responsible to get you to your final destination. The BR agent should have (and could have) fixed it for you. With award tickets, you may have had to wait for open award space, even though in theory it shouldn't matter.

I wanted to get the brain trust's opinion on something. I'm pretty sure I can't do what I would like with this reservation, but open to creative ideas...

I am flying AAA-BBB-CCC with AAA-BBB being an international segment and BBB-CCC domestic US.

• When I search for AAA-BBB alone, I see IN availability (and the saver award pricing)
• When I search for BBB-CCC alone, I see XN availability only on later flights that would have a long connection. I don't see XN available on the flight that I want
• When I search for AAA-CCC, I see IN availability on AAA-BBB and XN showing for the later BBB-CCC connections (but not the ones I want) pricing at the saver business price. For the connections I want, it shows JN on both segments at the everyday award price.
• When I look at economy award pricing for AAA-CCC, I see XN availability on AAA-BBB and the BBB-CCC flight I want if I book a sever economy ticket the entire way. It's this last point that is a bit perplexing to me.

Does this all make sense? I'm ultimately looking to book IN and AAA-BBB and XN on the BBB-CCC connection that I would like. But it looks like UA is only showing XN on the connection I want if I book the entire flight in economy saver.

I'm wondering if there is any way I can get this to work. One thought I had was to book AAA-BBB-CCC all in XN at the saver economy price and then call to try to switch the AAA-BBB segment to IN and pay the mileage difference to saver business. But I expect that they would need to reprice the whole journey and XN would need to show available for the connection. Is that right?

Any other options?

Two options book the longer connection and hope the shorter connection opens later, or book XN and try to find someone who will be willing to waitlist you for IN. Since IN is alreadyy open on the long flight, that should clear immediately and get you the flight combination that you want. It's just, you may spend quite a while trying to find someone who will actually waitlist an award these days.

What you're seeing is married segment inventory at work: for whatever reason, UA has decided that the earlier flight should only be sold as part of certain connecting itineraries, and AAA is included. The problem is that UA doesn't marry segments across cabins, so while that opens XN on AAA-BBB-CCC, it does not make the IN/XN combination available, because that would require XN on BBB-CCC as a standalone segment, which isn't currently available.

Thanks for the ideas. I might try the waitlist approach, but I also have had a tough time getting someone to do that because they say since award pricing is dynamic, they can't do it.

I'm not optimistic about this. It's a pretty popular route.

This is helpful to know and explains it. It sounds like in order to book IN + XN, I need XN to become available standalone (not as a married segment), which I don't think is likely. But we'll see.

Thanks!

All award bookings, including partner flights, can be cancelled and refunded for free correct? Is there a minimum time limit like min 1 week out?

Is there a way to get the 30 day calendar to only show dates that match my search criteria? I'm searching for non stop business seats and the 30 day calendar shows availability on all days but when I click on a date, sometimes it says "No flights match the filters you've selected." Thank you.

Yes, all award bookings are refundable. The only time limit is prior to the being marked a no-show -- one hour prior to departure should be safe.

There is not.

Is it possible to book award business and award economy on the same itinerary online? Thank you

Are you asking whether you can mix/match eco and biz segments? Yes, within one direction or out-bound/in-bound, freely combinable. Of course, all pax segments need to be the same if you want that to be on one reservation, but that is no different from paid tickets

Sorry, no. Same flight mix match biz and econ.

Unfortunately one cannot have two different cabins or even fare basis codes, for a single segment in one reservation. What you are seeking to accomplish would require two separate award reservations for the different passengers.

Do the phone reps see the exact same inventory we can see online?

Is there a way to price out specific segments on my own or do I need to call in?

Also - for a mod or someone - the wiki links to a 'how to'... looks like that website was sold to some self help thing.

Removed
Thanks for the heads-up

Agents see what you are seeing. Now, sometimes the website is stubborn and not letting you combine certain things - I have had agents override that for me. They can also manually price the X/XN/I/INs that are fixed, but finding one willing to do that these days is not easy.

One question and one heads up:

Heads up: A UA award ticket that includes (at least) 4Y (Discover Airlines) segments cannot be changed online once booked. I had an LH-EW outbound, 4Y-LH excursionist perk, UA inbound ticket. Once booked the online and mobile app change features were unavailable. This was true after flying the outbound. Only once the 4Y segment was used did the ticket become changeable again online.

Question: now that my ticket is changeable, I'm looking to change the return from departing LON to departing FCO (both back to USA). When searching as a new award ticket it's 31K return (I know! In the middle of high season summer travel). However, when I go to change my ticket it wants to charge me the full 40K miles. Why is this and would calling get me a refund of 9K miles as expected? (Original LON-USA return was 40K as well).

Thanks,
-RM