UA Motivation for not allowing award/pd combo?
Oct 23, 2018, 8:49 pm
#1
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UA Motivation for not allowing award/pd combo?
Living in a non-hub city (LAS) I find it increasingly hard to get a Saver Award for premium cabin seats to Europe or Asia and back into and out of LAS. If I am willing to book the flight to and from a hub city such as LAX or SFO or ORD or YVR I find much greater availability. I would be very willing to book the Saver Award and buy a premium ticket to and from the hub city if I could do this on one reservation so I would be protected if one of the flights was late.
I am just curious from a business standpoint why UA won't do this.
I am just curious from a business standpoint why UA won't do this.
Oct 23, 2018, 9:02 pm
#2
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ROI. They already have an informal policy where they would take care of you in that case, when booking UA metal all the way. In order to make it work with an actual guarantee of protection that would be meaningful, even when connecting to a partner flight -- they'd need a ton of back-end changes to handling faring, inventory, searches, etc. It would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, at a minimum, and I'm guessing it would take years for them to recoup that investment.
Oct 23, 2018, 9:16 pm
#3
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Another potential reason -- the fare rules for award and paid tickets are very, very different -- cancellation, changes, routing, mileage earning, ... and with the standard "most restrictive terms" clause, you would have a real mess figuring things out
And you would need a massive redesign of the search engine.
And you would need a massive redesign of the search engine.
Last edited by WineCountryUA; Oct 23, 2018 at 9:24 pm Reason: search engine
Oct 23, 2018, 9:40 pm
#4
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It would be nice, though, if United would actually state a protection policy for cases like this. AA has a stated internal policy for protection and I for one feel a little bit safer doing this on AA than I do on UA.
Oct 23, 2018, 10:13 pm
#5
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I don't believe it has anything to do with a business decision. The underlying GDS simply does not allow award and paid tickets on the same PNR. The same holds true for every airline.
Oct 24, 2018, 8:04 am
#7
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Oct 24, 2018, 9:19 am
#8
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They don’t allow this. However, OneWorld has a policy to provide protection when tickets are booked separately within the alliance. So, while you can’t buy an AA award ticket and add a paid segment to the same PNR, you get the same effect via OneWorld policy.
Oct 24, 2018, 9:26 am
#9
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Here are 2 additional sources:
https://viewfromthewing.boardingarea...award-tickets/
The best strategy is to book the award ticket and then ask an American agent over the phone to sell the revenue ticket into the existing award PNR. If the agent you speak to doesn’t know how to do this, hang up and call back.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...rd-ticket.html
So it seems to me a business policy or a limitation of UA's system
Oct 24, 2018, 10:08 am
#10
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Sorry, yes, I should have been more specific.
The reason that this is possible is that it is technically possible to have multiple, unrelated tickets within a PNR. It doesn’t change anything with regard to protection, and it is generally frowned upon by most airlines as it gets to be really confusing.
You could do the same thing on UA also, although generally an agent will refuse. However, it doesn’t matter — you would still have two tickets, one from AAA to BBB, and one from BBB to CCC, and if you were late for the BBB-CCC flight, it would be cancelled automatically. Incidentally, if you were late for the AAA-BBB flight, BBB-CCC would probably also be cancelled automatically because it’s in the same PNR, even though, strictly speaking, it needn’t be, because it’s on its own ticket. Various systems tend to assume that tickets on the same PNR are all related because that’s standard practice.
So, to be 100% clear: people who are calling AA and getting paid and award tickets on the same PNR are not gaining any IRROPS protection, because the protection they’re getting comes from the OneWorld policy and doesn’t require that the tickets be on the same PNR. The only thing it might help with is getting luggage interlined, and even then if AA would refuse to interline bags on separate PNRs, it could also refuse to interline them on separate tickets within a single PNR (I don’t know if they do or not).
I would love for *A to copy this particular OW policy, BTW.
The reason that this is possible is that it is technically possible to have multiple, unrelated tickets within a PNR. It doesn’t change anything with regard to protection, and it is generally frowned upon by most airlines as it gets to be really confusing.
You could do the same thing on UA also, although generally an agent will refuse. However, it doesn’t matter — you would still have two tickets, one from AAA to BBB, and one from BBB to CCC, and if you were late for the BBB-CCC flight, it would be cancelled automatically. Incidentally, if you were late for the AAA-BBB flight, BBB-CCC would probably also be cancelled automatically because it’s in the same PNR, even though, strictly speaking, it needn’t be, because it’s on its own ticket. Various systems tend to assume that tickets on the same PNR are all related because that’s standard practice.
So, to be 100% clear: people who are calling AA and getting paid and award tickets on the same PNR are not gaining any IRROPS protection, because the protection they’re getting comes from the OneWorld policy and doesn’t require that the tickets be on the same PNR. The only thing it might help with is getting luggage interlined, and even then if AA would refuse to interline bags on separate PNRs, it could also refuse to interline them on separate tickets within a single PNR (I don’t know if they do or not).
I would love for *A to copy this particular OW policy, BTW.
Oct 24, 2018, 10:32 am
#11
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So, to be 100% clear: people who are calling AA and getting paid and award tickets on the same PNR are not gaining any IRROPS protection, because the protection they’re getting comes from the OneWorld policy and doesn’t require that the tickets be on the same PNR. The only thing it might help with is getting luggage interlined, and even then if AA would refuse to interline bags on separate PNRs, it could also refuse to interline them on separate tickets within a single PNR (I don’t know if they do or not).
I would love for *A to copy this particular OW policy, BTW.
Maybe that is what you were saying - it was hard for me to decipher
Oct 24, 2018, 10:36 am
#12
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OW policy is that you get protection on separately-ticketed itineraries as if they were all on one ticket. Therefore, stuffing the tickets into a single PNR doesn’t add any protection that you don’t already have.
Oct 24, 2018, 10:37 am
#13
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Delta offers cash+point tickets, although it's a single ticket on a single itinerary paid for with a combination of points and money which maybe different than what the OP is requesting?
Oct 24, 2018, 10:40 am
#14
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Sorry, yes, I should have been more specific.
The reason that this is possible is that it is technically possible to have multiple, unrelated tickets within a PNR. It doesn’t change anything with regard to protection, and it is generally frowned upon by most airlines as it gets to be really confusing.
You could do the same thing on UA also, although generally an agent will refuse. However, it doesn’t matter — you would still have two tickets, one from AAA to BBB, and one from BBB to CCC, and if you were late for the BBB-CCC flight, it would be cancelled automatically. Incidentally, if you were late for the AAA-BBB flight, BBB-CCC would probably also be cancelled automatically because it’s in the same PNR, even though, strictly speaking, it needn’t be, because it’s on its own ticket. Various systems tend to assume that tickets on the same PNR are all related because that’s standard practice.
So, to be 100% clear: people who are calling AA and getting paid and award tickets on the same PNR are not gaining any IRROPS protection, because the protection they’re getting comes from the OneWorld policy and doesn’t require that the tickets be on the same PNR. The only thing it might help with is getting luggage interlined, and even then if AA would refuse to interline bags on separate PNRs, it could also refuse to interline them on separate tickets within a single PNR (I don’t know if they do or not).
I would love for *A to copy this particular OW policy, BTW.
In practice, UA seems to be accommodate accordingly with it when I have had multiple, all-UA tickets and am facing a misconnect. In those circumstances when asking for help, I've avoided drawing attention my home-made end-on-end, but in one case at least I know an agent did see it.
But yes, it would be much better if explicitly stated and especially extended to the alliance.
Oct 24, 2018, 10:41 am
#15
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