jsloan

I would call. While that itinerary is unusual, it doesn't seem abusive, so I don't suspect the agent will be intentionally unhelpful.

Kacee

Right. UA's systems are absolutely able to do it. Some agents are better than others and/or have access to better tools.

ali7204

That's absolutely true. In my case, I just had wonderful agent who went above and beyond to grab the seats which are not visible on UA.com and she didn't even charge the $25 telephone booking fees. It was for 5 J pax from South American to USA so I was fully expecting to hear the united phantom award space issue and indeed she mentioned it first but then after holding and continually working for more than 30 minutes, she was able to grab 5 J seats.

UA Fan

I booked both segments (not the ones I wanted) and then called to change. Spent more than one hour on two calls with their supervisors also and could not get anything done. Sigh.

One can make changes online after booking a flight?

How did you manage to get it ticketed online? One of my choices had the same issue and after two tries I went with another option.

ali7204

After a 3rd or 4th try, I still got an error but it was a different error. Something like "please call united to confirm the changes" so I called and agent looked at it and everything is fine on united end.
I can look up the reservations details on Azul website for my EP leg.

WineCountryUA

While change flights can be done online, it is dangerous if a partner flight is involved, you can end up in a state where the change fails but the original flights are lost and UA can not restore them.

P__Squared

A funny thing happened to me last night with UA's award system.

After months of planning it was finally time to book our trip to Indonesia next year. I found the flights we wanted to take, there was saver award availability in J the whole way (IAD-IST-BKK-CGK) and we had the points. Everything looked good. I transfer the necessary UR points to my UA account, go through the booking process, click "purchase." UA's site gives me an error.

I thought I might have gotten screwed by phantom award availability so I call up UA's support number. The woman on the phone was very helpful. It turns out there was award inventory in J from IAD-IST-CGK without the unnecessary stop in BKK. Additionally this itinerary will only cost me 70,000 miles for for some reason. I ask if there are two seats available since my wife and I are traveling together and indeed there are. As of this morning we have an email saying the itinerary is ticketed and confirmed and we have a confirmation number with TK.

Obviously this worked out well for us but I have to ask, what the heck happened? How was there a cheaper, more convenient itinerary available that never showed up on UA's search engine?

WineCountryUA

There are a number of things that may have happened
-- Award inventory is dynamic and what wasn't there 10 minutes can now be available and the reserse is equally true.
-- It may have been there but wasn't ranked at the top, the UA search engine ranks offerings based on a number factors (not publically known -- they probably include convenience factors {trip time, layover times, time of day, ...} and cost is there also -- but unclear how all this rolls together) -- you can force the lowest cost or least stops to the top (clicking on the column) to override UA's ranking
-- UA search engine "stops" after finding X results (200?) so potential solutions are missed
-- Lousy search
-- ....

For paid flights you can have the same issues and many use Matrix / Google Flights to a different / better set of results/ Not all search engines are created equal or work the same.

P__Squared

I looked up the same route on UA's website today and what do you know, saver award availability on the IAD-IST-CGK itinerary is the first thing that pops up. The IAD-IST-SIN-CGK itinerary is no longer there.

What I still can't figure out is why we were charged only 70k miles each for a J class ticket from the US to SE Asia.

LRD

I don't understand the taxes for a trip I'm planning. Pricing as individual awards:

#1 intra-Japan, $0 taxes
#2 intra-Europe, $52 taxes
#3 intra-Japan, $0 taxes

But the taxes, when booked together (with the intra-Europe flight as my "free"/excursionist), totals $105.

Does this seem right? Is there a way to get a tax-breakdown before I purchase?

JayhawkCO

Here's a new one. I had my brother-in-law and sister-in-law booked SEZ-ADD-(LFW)-IAH in C. I was checking on seating assignments for them on the ADD-IAH sector and noticed it said that the flight left at 8:30 in the morning. When I pulled up the itinerary on united.com, it showed that flight left at 21:30. So, essentially there was a schedule change and ET hadn't notified UA so I never got an alert. This was going to make them misconnect. So, I scrambled for options, found two saver seats on ADD-LHR and then I called UA and they were nice enough to open up C space on LHR-DEN-IAH.

Their final destination is actually SLC, but I couldn't get the agent to change the destination because it was over 1,000 miles away from IAH (new one for me). I asked if she could just change the final destination to DEN then, and then she told me it couldn't be over 500 miles away. Not sure why the policy changed in those 30 seconds. Either way, I'll just have them collect their luggage in DEN (if they check any) and then no-show for the IAH flight. My apologies for anyone flying on the flight that they're not taking as they have two seats in First booked.

Chris

Xyzzy

Is that one-way or round trip? If round trip, are you sure that any/all of the segments are in J? I'd double check that.

findark

The final itinerary screen should let you break down the taxes.

JeredF

Most recently, I have seen the online award booking engine determine number of seats available based only on the first segment -- that is, if 1 seat is available all the way through and 3 are available on the first segment, it thinks there are 3 seats available all the way through. This will fail when attempting to complete the purchase.

It's very frustrating, so now I check all segments for individual availability. This works for long-haul segments, but strangely short-haul is a bit more dicey -- I've seen availability for LHR-MUC-BOS, for example, without LHR-MUC being available.

toade

I'm trying to book a flight from Rome to Los Angeles in business class. I have found FCO-ZRH-LAX. The first leg is available as economy saver, and the second leg is available as business saver, but only if I search separately. They do not show up as mixed cabin if I search FCO-LAX. I figured I could call United, and they would be able to book the mixed cabin award for me, at 70k miles, however when I called they said they can't book them as one award, that they have to book the first leg at 8000 miles, and the second leg at 70000 miles.

Is this normal for United? With American they were easily able to see that saver space was available on both, and make the mixed cabin booking for me. I asked to speak with a supervisor, and she said the same thing, because it doesn't show up as a mixed cabin booking in their system, they have to book it as two separate bookings.

Thanks for the help.