Combining two reservations?
 

I've been lurking around for a while, and I haven't seen this questoin asked or answered elsewhere. If it was I appologize.

Here's the situation. I am taking my wife with me on a business trip later in the year to Brussels. Unfortunately, corporate policy says that I must book with our coporate travel agent. That same corporate policy says that the travel agent can't book my wife's ticket.

By that time I'll be a 1K. I'd like to make sure that my wife and I can fly together, and at the very least get E+ seats with the middle blocked, if not upgrade together. From what I understand for her to get E+ seats she has to be on the same PNR as me.

Is there a way for United reservations to combine the two records into one, so that I can get her the benefits?

No problem
 

You can upgrade or selest seats together in E+ by calling UA reservations and giving them both PNRs. If your wife is not M+ elite, she will have to sit next to you (i.e. middle seat) in E+.

At least that was what UA Reservation told me last year when I was lowly non-status traveling with my 1P partner. We are now both M+ elite so we can choose aisle and window with open middle seat when traveling together.

Well, it's not quite "no problem"
 

This much is true.

However, be aware that any schedule change, equipment substitution, or even system sweep triggered by who knows what will bump your wife back into E-.

And now to answer your initial question, no. Unfortunately, UA does not have the ability to "link" your records. The best that agents can do is annotate both records; but since these are just comments, they won't be recognized by the system in the events I noted above.

This has been discussed before (though not recently), so you're OK ;) . Welcome to FT.

This I did not know. Thanks WindFlyer. ^

Agree with above comments
 

1. No, the two PNRs cannot be combined. As noted above, have reservations make a comment into the record that you and your wife are traveling together. This comment helps to "link" the two PNRs together - albeit in a very loose fashion. In the event of delays, misconnections, cancelations, etc. a good reservationist will pick up on the comments and ensure that you and your wife are rescheduled on the same flights. This does not always happen, however, as a computer will sometimes do the rescheduling and will not "see" the comment. In the event of a flight disruption, it's best to double check. I learned this lesson the hard way when my two minor children, who were on separate PNRs from mine, were rescheduled on different flights from me - even though a comment about the different PNRs was entered into both records. UA's explanation: The computer is not programmed to examine the comment section and thus never "saw" the comments. After much reshuffling, we all ended up on the same flights.

2. Your wife's separate PNR does not prevent her from sitting in E+. Once you have both PNRs, call UA and request it. As a premier level UA FF, you may request that one individual be moved from E- to E+ to be seated next to you. As an example, I am flying to the west coast for a meeting next week and will have my minor niece return with me. She is on a separate PNR but I, as a 1P, requested that she be moved from E- to E+ next to me. No problem.

Can anyone confirm the bolded clause? It would be better strategy, I think, to take window and aisle seats (in, e.g., an A320) so that the middle stays blocked as long as possible--in case the companion does get bumped back and the bump goes unnoticed for a while.

Also, is it true that separate PNR's means no ability to use one person's 500 milers for both?

The only reason it's an issue, of course, is because united.bomb won't let me use a CS e-cert for an itinerary of more than one passenger (even though the rules of the cert make no such exclusion).

Many thanks.

I just did ;)


Incorrect; though you'll have to call to request the UG, and your travelling partner does not clear on your window...


...that's dot.bomb for you :rolleyes:

With one caveat - some FTers have reported success reserving aisle seats across from each other.

I just booked a business trip to vegas and then booked my fiancee on the same return flight (he is flying in after I am already there) with a reward ticket. I just threw in my MP# on his reservation and he cleared for E+. I booked the window seat on my corporate website for myself and then booked the aisle seat on ual.com for him. Worse case scenario is we trade the middle for either the window or aisle so we can sit next to each other. I should update and confirm how this works out but the itinerary seems ok.

On another note, I noticed that if you use miles(not e-upgrades) to upgrade, your upgrade clears instantly as if it were a paid upgrade. I have found if I NEED and upgrade (say on a red-eye) and don't want to leave it to chance, I can use miles and be confirmed instantly. Is this true or a fluke?

True. Mileage upgrades are confirmable anytime after the booking is made.. where as e500 upgrades only clear at your elite upgrade window (24-100 hours out).

Here's another similar question about "combining" reservations (but somewhat embarrassing, as I am not an FT or UA newbie): Is there a way to link a paid and an award res, at least if the carriers are the same or in the same alliance?

Sometimes one finds a cheap fare from X to Y (a long distance, maybe even international trip), but adding Z (which might be only a few hundred miles beyond Y) adds many hundreds of dollars to the fare. So one books the paid ticket from X to Y, and redeems miles for the short hop from Y to Z (or maybe Y to Z is even a "long hop," but still relatively overpriced for the EQMs you earn!).

I've done this type of thing a few times, and never ran into misconnect problems as the flights were all reasonably on time, but am concerned what would happen in the case of irregular ops. Will annotating both reservations at least be helpful in such an event?

Let's hear from the experts on this forum, especially the "flaky" ones (you know who you are! ;) ).

Honestly Kathy, I think the safety you are asking for can only truly be ensured by buying the X-Y-Z ticket as one. You get the fare of a lower ticket but you lose the security of buying two tickets X-Y and Y-Z... but that doesn't say someone may help you out.

Of course! I realize that is the tradeoff. @:-)

However, I guess I want to know if an annotation in both reservations would at least be helpful; i.e., if a human being would actually look at it and do something, or if, even with such an annotation, action will only be taken if I initiate it somehow (i.e., by phone or in person at an airport).

I did something like that about 5 years ago. My wife was joining me for a business trip to the UK and was flying on my miles. We got her tickets first and she had some odd routing like SEA-SFO-JFK-LHR. My corporate travel department had a more direct route in mind (1 stop, IIRC). I asked them to check the routing my wife was flying and it wound up being cheaper (duh, it was a lot less convenient). I took it so we could travel together and the company saved a few bucks. Wish I had known I could have had her in E+, it would have been much more pleasant that what happened on the SFO-JFK leg (I had ailse, she had window and at the last minute before the door closed a woman with two toddlers and a 6th grader in tow boarded - one dirty diaper between us and the other on the aisle seat across from me. NEVER AGAIN!)

You paged?

OK, I'm no expert... but when making a connection on non-conjunctive tickets (say revenue and award) I have called the different operating carriers and had my records annotated to that effect. Don't know whether this had anything to do with the annotations, but both SK and UA did save my bacon on separate situations ^

...oh, and believe it or not, LH too :o