grlmopz

Hi all,

I'm trying to use United miles to book an award ticket to Khartoum, Sudan. The problem? KRT or Khartoum yield an invalid airport code error on United's website.
I checked the region definitions page on the Mileageplus website and Sudan is clearly listed. Furthermore, both Aeroplan's and Avianca's search engines shows plenty of availability from Addis Ababa on Ethiopian Airlines.
This is either a database error or United is refusing to sell tickets to KRT. I can't find a single UA agent who understands what I'm saying, instead insisting it's because there's no award availability.

(And, before you say it's because it's too dangerous, I'll note that Mileageplus will allow ticketing to Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan and Juba, South Sudan.)

Help?

PaulMCO

More likely is that Sudan is still listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. There are still some treasury sanctions in place and not all were lifted in 2017.

N104UA

agreed, although UA does have fares filed, I am assuming they won't book due to sanctions, similar to IKA

dls25

I went through a similar situation a few years ago trying to get to Yemen. I got the restrictions removed but it was quite the uphill battle.

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Fwiw, I flew to KRT a few months ago and I just bought an ORD-KRT ticket on Royal Jordanian rather than deal with UA again. It was only $500 RT - you might just want to consider a revenue ticket...
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Xyzzy

Not true. ne can buy tix from EWR-IKA on united.com. It prices and tickets that just fine.

It looks to me as if KRT is not in united.com's list of valid destinations.

N104UA

I was unaware of that, I assumed due to sanctions a US carrier couldnt sell those tickets.

pushmyredbutton

This is likely the answer. The only destination that was 'blacklisted' from UA as far as I could tell was Cuba a few years ago; you couldn't even book the Copa flights there.

UA.com doesn't support every airport for reasons I'll never understand. Even innocent airports with partner service like LOP are on that list. I've had success booking awards when I feed the agents the flight numbers (with availability) to the affected airports.

Fwiw, it doesn't stop crediting. I've had multiple 'unbookable' PEK-FNJ tickets credit miles normally.

grlmopz

I'd do this if I were planning to fly directly to KRT, but I'm instead trying to include KRT-ADD-HGA in J as an Excursionist Perk addition to a longer itinerary: JFK-IST-ASM; KRT-ADD-HGA; HGA-ADD-EWR.

jason1081

If I may ask, did you have success in the end? I'm trying to do something similar with the excursionist perk: HKG-ADD-LOS, ABJ-ADD-KRT, KRT-ADD-HKG