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I have to say, the VAST majority of awards coming out of accounts we see are Savers. Easily 85%. More often than not, though, people find they're saving more by using them for *A awards going overseas, like you guys have mentioned. Last month, I saw one guy's account who flew himself and his 6 children (!!) to Hawaii for Christmas, and did his booking ONLINE on December 2nd. (LAX-HNL 12/22, HNL-LAX 12/28) Color me shocked. :eek:
The only reason anyone in our office ever gets the idea people are having problems booking savers is because of the one meanie we get a day (average, don't quote that) who pitches a fit because he's been trying to get a Saver to Maui with his 12 children, wife, nanny, and girlfriend for "EASILY 5 YEARS" (even though we can clearly see he's only been a member for 3 and gets most--if not all--of his miles from his 5 Visa cards) and is going to "stop flying United" if we don't open up seats for his party of 16. :rolleyes: As if I could in the first place. Oh, geez, don't get me started. |
I think UA has good inventory for Y. But when it comes to F/J, it's very limited. F is usually better (but I found most of the time there's only 1 F available), while getting J is next to impossible (at least for the routes I need). For the past X'mas, I was able to get 5 J tickets for HKG-NRT from NW (it took lot of patience but at least I got them). For UA, not even 1 ticket was available and I had been checking for availability almost everyday for 3 months. Also, I was also able to get J on CO HKG-EWR for my sister on 01/02/06 (that was a shock from NonePass). UA has none for saver award.
I usually plan my trip 3-4 months out so maybe I need to do it earlier. It's also true that *A has better premium seat availability but it doesn't allow change after departure. Also, when travel together, I want to pay and SWU my ticket while my friend/family use the award ticket so UA (or possibly LH) is the only way to go. |
Originally Posted by Random_Flyer
Honestly, I think saver awards work best for either super long term planning -or- ultra last minute planning. I tend to use miles for the latter (last minute trips) and more often than not there is saver availability with the obvious exception of massive holiday weekends. For mid term planning though, getting a saver award may be more difficult, but it makes sense if you think about it from an IM perspective:
Long Term: Limited number of seats on each flight are booked by those plannning way in advance. Mid Term: Saver awards are gone, but still plenty of time to sell seats. Why should IM open up more than the standard allotment? Last Minute: Seats are going unsold and product will perish. IM opens more Saver seats in order to collect something (miles) rather than let them go unsold. I suspect this was also the thinking behind the semi-recent united.com enhancement that shows open flights with saver availability within the next month. What has been observed empirically doesn't necessarily match with the above. In point of fact, there are sometimes (often?) NO awards available "long term" (i.e., 11 months before flight dates, the earliest you can book). Also, as another example, around March-April 2004 I was monitoring inventory of award seats in business class SFO-SYD about two months in advance of desired dates, and saw inventory change radically from day to day. As I recall, inventory for the dates I wanted opened up about four or five weeks ahead of flight dates. Would that qualify as "last minute?" :confused: |
Originally Posted by KathyWdrf
As I recall, inventory for the dates I wanted opened up about four or five weeks ahead of flight dates. Would that qualify as "last minute?" :confused:
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Originally Posted by roberto99
Now, if I can only use up my miles before UA's end comes....
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UA should look at NW's system. There, you get a month's calendar, color coded to show what types of awards are currently available on which dates. It makes planning much easier. But hey, that might require working on the web site.
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Originally Posted by holtju2
Some posters have indicated that SQ for example opens up award availability just couple of days before.
some one month, the last with 13 days notice. I would claim the that 3-1/2 month window to be the hardest to get availability but it is far from zero. With the free cancellation option or 1Ks(3Ks) and UGS this year, I expect this to turn to the worse. I now just book all the awards I might ever use for the summer and then cancel the ones which are less convenient. |
In addition to CO, getting saver awards on DL is no picnic, either.
I think the ual.com award redemption capabilities are worse than the availability. I've always gotten what I've wanted through calling... |
Originally Posted by CGNC
I agree--I tried to book a J class ticket on Air NZ to AKL last summer and it was only after calling, multiple times, that they finally found a routing that worked for me. The small fee they tack on is well worth it, esp. when considering the amount of miles you save vs. standard option.
allocation schemes and buckets. The 'mile price' is the same as for the saver award but it comes with more restrictions. Especially no changes once departed. Also you do not have the option of getting a 'standard' *A award. On intl. routes, I found that it is most of the time easier to get tha *A award than the saver one. Especially in the premium cabins. |
Originally Posted by weero
Nah. I got many, many SQ awards in Y and C. Some half a year ahead,
some one month, the last with 13 days notice. I would claim the that 3-1/2 month window to be the hardest to get availability but it is far from zero. |
Originally Posted by holtju2
Maybe I should have worded it as an additional award availability.
I found that ex. Oz, you almost always get OS availability of you wait until the last 2 days before departure. Their yield management seems to be very efficient. That does not solve problem however that you will not find a return as that is not close enough in the future. |
Thanks for all the replies and suggestions. I'm going to figure out a flight online in an alliance partner, and then call them up and see what they can do for me. I know I saw it available one day, and the next it was gone. Should have just booked it. Ugh.
We'll see what happens :) If the ticket wasn't for me, I would be like okay I'll take the miles, but my sister doesn't need the miles really, so I'd rather not spend a grand, and get a mileage ticket for 60K. |
I've had zero problems with savers; flew DEN-SMF for a wedding with exactly the flights I wanted. Flew DEN-SFO last-minute to the MR201 seminar and didn't get the routing I wanted, but was able to standby for it.
Been using lots of super-savers (15K r/t nonstop 750-mile radius tickets). Bought two DEN-TUS for wife and son, bought another BOI-DEN for my mom right at Christmas! Bought another for a friend traveling SFO-LAX last-minute. In the latter case, they even let me switch to SFO-LAX-SJC (open jaw) with NO added fees, for the 15K RDMs. Incredibly nice of UA. I've never tried int'l savers or savers on *A carriers. It seems this is where it starts to get hard?! (Without these savers I got, I would have spent over $1500 on the tickets above; instead I used 105K RDMs. Go United!!!) |
Originally Posted by moondog
Just to provide some perspective, I am very pleased with UA saver availability. In fact, I think UA is the best in the business in this regard at this point in time (AA used to be much better; now they are much worse).
If you want to see bait-and-switch, I suggest you try using DL miles. For almost anything remotely useful (i.e. that would get me out of paying $800 for a domestic itin), the price is 50k miles to ride in the back of the bus. On UA, not only are 25k awards much easier to snag, but standard awards only cost 40K, AND in many cases, it's possible to snag F awards for the same price. For example, I recently flew a friend PDX-BOS-LGA-PDX for 40K in F during the peak holiday season (12-22 outbound, 1-02 return). I did the same over July 4 weekend to DCA for 2 people. Then, there are *A awards, which saved me thousands of greenbacks intra-Asia last year. Another good thing about UA awards: aside from the $15 charge to book anything over the phone or at a CTO, there are no booking fees. NW also excels in this regard, but DL and AA do not. Anyway, while I agree that miles are not as easy to use these days as they have been in the past, I think UA is the wrong airline to point fingers at. Regards. wwbgd |
Originally Posted by WWBGD
It does seem suprising, however, that there is almost always standard awards available.
That's because standard awards take revenue seats and therefore are not the purview of IM. As long as there's a seat to sell on the flight, you should be able to get a standard award. |
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