thearmada

I booked an Air Canada award ticket using United miles.

I need to change my final destination of my award ticket. I can't make the destination change since it needs to be reticketed and there is no availability to reticket the itinerary.

If I cancel my award ticket, does my current award return to inventory or not? If it does return to inventory, how quick is it? I hope this makes sense.

WindowSeatFlyer

I don't quite understand what the issue is.
Is there availability for the new itinerary (new destination and your chosen date)?
If so, the UA website allows you to change to the new destination (and date change also, if that's what you want)
For example, here's one of my award itineraries:


By choosing the "Edit" option, I can change the departure airport, destination airport, and/or travel date.
If there is availability, I can rebook to the new itinerary.
In the example below I have chosen to change all three search parameters, and the new itinerary is available for booking and ticketing.


But I could also have chosen to keep the departure airport and date and only changed the destination.

Can't you simply change the destination and reissue the ticket on the UA website?

As for award seat availability and if/when seats are available if you cancel the current itinerary, the answer is most likely "nobody knows for sure".
Perhaps the seats will become available, perhaps they won't.

thearmada

I am currently flying YVR-YYZ-ORD all on Air Canada. I would like to fly YVR-YYZ-MSP.

If I do an award search YVR-MSP on UA, there is no availability where I keep my same YVR-YYZ flight (it is in BC for a redeye) presumably because there is no availability on the flight from YVR-YYZ. There is availability from YYZ-MSP in fare class I.

I have a couple ways to approach this.
1) Cancel my current flight and hope the YVR-YYZ flight returns 1 more seat available in fare class I. I can then go and rebook my flight YVR-YYZ-MSP all in I class. Downside is that I do not know if the ticket I have booked in I will return from YVR-YYZ.
2) UA will allow me to change it from YVR-YYZ-ORD to just YVR-YYZ. I could try that and then add on the segment from YYZ-MSP. This seems like it won't work if the current method of just changing destination will not work.
3) Would calling Air Canada do anything or would it be useless since they were not the booking agent?

Does that make sense?

WindowSeatFlyer

I performed another experiment with my itinerary and was able to change RDU-IAD-VIE-ARN to RDU-IAD-VIE-FRA and keep the existing RDU-IAD-VIE segments. So it appears to be possible to change the destination and keep the current flights I want to keep. But that doesn't mean it'll work in every situation.
The fact that you can see YYZ-MSP availability doesn't automatically mean YVR-YYZ-MSP will be available even if you already have the YVR-YYZ segment booked because married segment availability can be different from individual segment availability. Both YVR-YYZ and YYZ-MSP can be available, but YVR-YYZ-MSP isn't.

You could try calling UA to see if they can help you. They're the ones that need to make the change since you used UA miles. AC can't make the change for you.

thearmada

Thanks for the info.

It is likely married segments that is not allowing the change and no inventory available to redo it.

thearmada

I called AC and they said they were not able to help me since I booked it with. UA said they did not know about inventory since AC controls that.

Kind of a chicken or an egg scenario. Neither could help with what I wanted to know / change.

Adam Smith

It's a United ticket, not sure why you would have expected AC to change it - as was advised upthread, they can't.

Whether UA can drop one segment while retaining the other - which could be impossible, or could simply be a matter of finding an agent who knows what they're dong - and other similar questions, are questions for the UA forum, so I'm going to move this thread there.

Adam Smith
AC Forum Co-Moderator

WineCountryUA

Cleaned out Aeroplan related posts as this is an UA issued ticket.

Will inventory return after an award cancelation, sometime yes and sometimes no. It depends on the operating carrier's evaluation of its inventory. Additionally, the operating carrier, if it does return to inventory, will it return to just its program members or to the *A system. As this will involve multiple system in Revenue Management process, no one (including customer facing reps of the operating carrier) could possibly provide a definitive answer or a specific timeframe.

To change a UA award ticket, you generally need new available for the entire new booking. UA will allow re-use of booked segments they operate (but requires an agent, not online), some reports of LH allowing, but most other carriers will not (for partner awards).

So strictly speaking it is not possible to change just a single partner segment on a UA issued award ticket.