theOtherHolmes

Thank you! That is very helpful. What did mahasamatman mean by "award inventory is based on origin and destination and they no longer allow you to cobble together awards segment-by-segment. Calling would be an exercise in futility"?

That is, what are the official rules for booking one-way partner award travel? Can I not find each segment and call if not bookable online (similar to Aeroplan)? I will need to transfer from Marriott Travel Package so I have to make sure it is bookable before I can transfer the miles over. Otherwise I will transfer to Aeroplan since I know I can definitely make the booking by calling AP. The extra taxes (e.g. about 50-80 CAD) via AP will be worth it.

Kacee

That is not entirely true. There are various potential workarounds, though it helps to have status. If I were OP (and were intent on using UA miles) I would book the J itinerary, then call and see if UA can change the NH segment to F. UA supervisors have that capability; it's just a question whether they will do it for you.

The rules are not published, but no, in general you can no longer put a UA award itinerary together segment by segment over the phone. See above.

In that case, I would just go the AP route.

jsloan

Happy to help.

In October 2016, UA changed their award rules such that if you do a multi-city search, you get point-to-point pricing. So, if you searched YYZ-ORD, ORD-NRT, and NRT-WUH with multi-city search, you'd get charged for three awards. When that happened, UA agents were basically reduced to seeing the same inventory that you'd see -- so, if your flight didn't appear on a YYZ-WUH search, you'd get charged extra miles as they pieced it together.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that (some) agents have gotten more flexible since the initial rollout -- if your request passes their personal "sensibility filter." Adding YYZ-ORD to an existing ORD-NRT-WUH reservation might be OK, and so might changing an all J award to F on the one segment that has an F cabin. Trying to build EWR-SFO-ZRH-BCN-IST-DXB, with 23 hour stops in each city, isn't likely to fly anymore.

I agree completely. I'd pay C$50-80 to avoid the risk of MileagePlus agents refusing to / being unable to book it the way I want. One additional complication: changes on itineraries with partner segments are tricky, as it seems that they need to hold new inventory to make the change. So, if your booking used the last available partner award seat, it might not be possible to change it.

Kacee

My recent experience changing a partner award suggests this is not the case. I was able to make changes online to the TPAC segment on BR without losing the connecting TG segment, even without available TG inventory.

jsloan

Good to know; I hope that's a permanent fix. ^ I still would be inclined to use AP for this redemption, just as you suggested, however.

Kacee

Oh I completely agree.

I would also still be very conservative about changing awards online . . . it's a risky process.

theOtherHolmes

I'm booking via Aeroplan. Just signed up for a couple credit cards to top up my AP account, should be able to post soon. Being in Canada it is much easier to get AP points than United, previously I thought United was a more superior program, since I naturally assume the worst of AP among Star Alliance. How wrong was I!

jsloan

:-) United had a much better program than AP, pretty much across the board, for years. MileagePlus has taken massive hits over the past 4 years, however. I'd still say that UA is generally better, because they never charge a fuel surcharge on an award, but AP is a clear winner in this particular case.

Kacee

I think they've been pretty close to eachother on an overall basis for some time.

Both used to be better than they are now. UA has seriously degraded its booking engine by materially reducing routing flexibility, while AP has cut many of the bargains out of its award chart (two remaining exceptions being *A J and F North America to Europe, at 55k and 70k one-way, respectively).

Now UA still offers no surcharges, ever, while AP offers more flexibility in routing. So it remains the case that one program may be better than the other based on the specific award and what's more important to you.

Unknown

I've recently booked TPE-NRT-EWR for 70k miles with the first segment on NH. At time of booking only X was available on the NH segment but it looks like I has now opened up. I called UA to change that segment to business but was told I'd need to pony up another 10k miles to switch the NH segment to business. Is this correct? Haven't flown UA in ages but I don't ever remember them ever charging different mileage amounts for mixed itineraries.

jsloan

It is.

UA charges more miles for partner J/F awards than for saver awards on its own metal. When you switch the TPE-NRT flight to business class, you trigger a repricing of the award as North Asia to North America Partner instead of North Asia to North America United Saver.

This surcharge doesn't apply for intraregional flights, so if you were able to find TPE-PVG-EWR, with PVG-EWR on UA, you wouldn't need to pay any extra miles to get TPE-PVG in business.

Taoyuan

Assuming you're on UA for NRT-EWR, I believe this is because you are now being charged the partner rate instead of the UA rate. From what I've gathered here, when you're crossing award regions (like North Asia to Japan), you would incur the partner rate. This wasn't the case with that segment in X.

Edit -- too slow to post but this appears to be the case based on the above post

findark

Yeah, you're getting dinged pretty badly because Japan is its own region so TPE-NRT is considered "significant".

Unknown

Huh, thanks for the responses. I find it strange that a coach segment on a partner doesn't trigger the partner award pricing as well. Is there any information about this policy from United? I can't find anything on the website.

jsloan

No; the behavior of mixed-metal awards isn't documented anywhere, AFAIK.

There's no difference in pricing between partner and UA coach awards, so I think it would be more strange if adding a non-UA coach segment to the end of your UA business class flight suddenly raised the price as though you had flown the partner the whole way.