italdesign

My paid itin (domestic UA) had a schedule change. Agent agreed to change it to something better, but he isn't seeing the one I want, even though it shows on Kayak and the purchase link to UA.com works fine (looks like a through fare, not separate tickets). However, I verified it doesn't show up on UA.com when searching O/D. It does have a 6 hour layover, is that the problem? I know award ticket has something like a 4hr max for domestic connection, but I didn't think it applied to paid ticket. So why does it show through Kayak but not on UA.com directly? And is there a way I can get the UA call center to give me this flight?

Original: OGG-LAX-ORD-IND, depart Nov 28
Desired: OGG-SFO-IND (only showing via Kayak)

Thanks.

mduell

Is there a shorter layover in SFO to the first legal IND flight?

xliioper

The 4 hour connection limit also applies to domestic revenue flights (not just award flights). Contrary to your assumption, this is not a "through fare", it's a broken fare which can be seen in the fare rules.

OGG-SFO S SAO0HJEN
SFO-IND T TAA2AQEN

Greater than 4 hour connections are allowed when combining multiple fares like this (they are just no allowed on single fares) provided the fare rules permit the combinations. UA does price out broken fares, so not sure why it is not offering this particular option when searching one-way flights. You can actually force the UA website to price it out by using multi-city search.

garykung

One of the problem with Kayak is the flights shown may be cached search.

FWIW - everytime I use a OTA, I will make sure that the option is bookable first.

italdesign

In this case, Kayak has a bookable UA link, but not if I search on UA.com directly (at least, not O/D search; maybe multi-city works as suggested upthread, but not sure I can convince an agent to change to that).

JDS747

This may be a HUACA situation as I've had UA agents do all kinds of odd routings for me.

For example earlier this year I was booked HYS-DEN-ORD-IND for the following morning. I was done in HYS around noon so called UA to see about getting out that day instead of waiting until the next morning (SDC through the app or website wasn't giving me any options). I had a few different options in mind after doing a few searches. Most of them had me spending the night in ORD, or a red eye to IAD, but I would still get back to IND much earlier than the original booking. The agent put me on hold, came back a little later with something that didn't show up in any of the searches. He said how about HYS-DEN-SFO-IND (red eye) getting you back even earlier than those others you proposed? It worked out great and my upgrade on the SFO-IND cleared too!

milepig

I'm guessing Kayak found some sort of open jaw or similar ticket that UA can't replicate in their system. It works when it is sent from another site, but not when they key it is. This could be because they can't or because they don't want to be creative or because they aren't trained to do it. Any of the above are possible.

This topic has also been discussed on a thread about more general issues with rebooking and inability to find flights you can find elsewhere.

I have one that I can find on Google Flights and send to united.com where it searches, finds the flights and brings up the "book it" screen. A dummy click then brings up the "complete purchase screen." But, I can't find the same flights on united.com either from scratch or when trying to do an itinerary change and agents can't call it up either.

I had some time on my hands one day and the price difference was enough to justify rebooking so I spent at least a couple hours on the phone all the way up to the rate desk and then web help desk, and no one could find the fare that I'd sent to their own system. To repeat the situation- I could have just booked it except this was a change to an existing itinerary.

The only thing i can figure is that it looks like the Google Flights result had found a fairly complex routing that had an open leg in Japan resulting in ORD-NRT-[open]-KIX-PEK as a single leg and then PEK-ORD as the return. No one could call it up by hand, even when I read them the booking code.

I sort of think that they mostly deal with less informed pax and stopped listening when I got down to "could you please search using this exact booking code" or "I'm seeing it booked as two one-way legs not 3 legs."

No dice, never made it happen. I think I was close once, as an agent could sort of reproduce it from my description, but I'd been on the phone so long that the fare was gone.