birth certificate check? Never seen or heard of this. Birth certificate is not required documentation either - Id be surprised if anyone asked for this even had it. And we have never been asked for this - passports of course, but never birth certificates.

That said, there will be a couple of, if not more, doc checks - at check in and at the gate for sure for BOM. While you could probably get away with a 2.5 year old as a lap child on a domestic flight (especially someone like my daughter, who is small for her age (not that we would of have tried that)), since there is no ID checks for small children, there’s a 0% chance of this on an international flight. Even if you could, it is fraud, not to mention a violation of FAA regs.

Please dont even think about this.

If there is availability (very unlikely) it would typically be for one seat 2 or 3 days out. DEL is a bit worse. If you are traveling with 3 (as it sounds like) you 'd be better off checking AI (also near impossible now), LX, LH or a combination of the above.

By LX, LH, do you mean checking their website for united flights or simply flying their metal? I'm only looking to fly non-stop EWR-BOM

Also, is it possible these seats are being snapped up a few minutes after united releases the date? Right now, Oct 4 2018 is the latest you can go so wondering if united releases a new date every midnight EST and that's the best time to check

The suggestion was to look for award space on LX/LH with a connection.

While UA opens up a new day for booking every night, as you point out, they tend to load all flights with 0 saver award inventory, especially in J. While you're welcome to check, of course, it's much more likely that UA is selling every seat without having to open any award saver seats than it is that they're releasing a set number about 330 days out which are consistently getting purchased.

You can view future flight status at http://cablepick.com/united . (You'll likely need to try a few times to get it to load). The "United Polaris business Upgrade Standby List" will show you the number of premium cabin seats currently booked. My guess is that it will be zero for nearly every flight that far out in the schedule, yet no saver awards will be available.

UA tends to open some saver space close in if it appears that they might fail to sell the seat.

hi - if you go to the ssl version of the site, it opens right away consistently. Try this - https://www.cablepick.net/united

I plan to fly sometime around Dec 15 which is considered peak time for india-bound flights. I guess it's super unlikely united will release any award seats at all in that case. If I recall, united used to be very good about releasing award seats more than other carriers like AA or Delta. Has that changed?

Lastly, when you say united tends to open seats close in - how close? A few weeks or few months? I only want to fly if I can get a business seat; not otherwise

it has changed and you have zero chance of scoring even 1 seat for that time of year. Like I explained they sometimes release one seat a few days out.

Your best bet is with a connection or to buy a ticket.