Best times/days to check award inventory?

 
Old Jun 9, 2006, 9:08 am
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Best times/days to check award inventory?

Anyone have any thoughts on when are good times/days to call and check with UA for MP award seats? I have a *A itinerary and can't waitlist for C seats on one UA metal segment (NRT-HNL), so I'm parked in e+ and hoping two C seats open up.

Searched the forum but couldn't find anything definitive... may be the case that there is no magic time/window for calling, but things change, so who knows. Thanks!
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Old Jun 9, 2006, 9:49 am
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Originally Posted by RodneyBD
Anyone have any thoughts on when are good times/days to call and check with UA for MP award seats? I have a *A itinerary and can't waitlist for C seats on one UA metal segment (NRT-HNL), so I'm parked in e+ and hoping two C seats open up.

Searched the forum but couldn't find anything definitive... may be the case that there is no magic time/window for calling, but things change, so who knows. Thanks!
It seems like I remember someone mentioning that early morning is a good time to call. Especially if your are booking far out.
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Old Jun 9, 2006, 10:17 am
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Originally Posted by ORDflyr
It seems like I remember someone mentioning that early morning is a good time to call. Especially if your are booking far out.
I heard from an Awards Desk agent, before they merged the rev desk in, that the best time to call is 6am to 7am as thats when they update the system...not sure if its true but doen't hurt to call then.
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Old Jun 9, 2006, 11:12 am
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Originally Posted by oontiveros
I heard from an Awards Desk agent, before they merged the rev desk in, that the best time to call is 6am to 7am as thats when they update the system...not sure if its true but doen't hurt to call then.
What time zone?
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Old Jun 9, 2006, 11:57 am
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Originally Posted by tods27
What time zone?

IIRC, time zone of your departure city.
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Old Jun 9, 2006, 12:02 pm
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Originally Posted by Triple7
IIRC, time zone of your departure city.
I thought it was time zone of the Airline headquarters. My experience has been such from talking with United and American.

But then again, I could be wrong...
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Old Jun 9, 2006, 5:22 pm
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Originally Posted by tods27
What time zone?
Central US
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Old Jun 9, 2006, 5:27 pm
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Originally Posted by oontiveros
Central US
Or Mumbai.
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Old Jun 9, 2006, 5:31 pm
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Originally Posted by mahasamatman
Or Mumbai.
Well, I guess they are still on the same system...but i do hope you speak to a US desk...
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Old Jun 10, 2006, 11:40 pm
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Originally Posted by oontiveros
I heard from an Awards Desk agent, before they merged the rev desk in, that the best time to call is 6am to 7am as thats when they update the system...not sure if its true but doen't hurt to call then.
I'm confused. What if someone has an award reservation that expires? It expires at midnight in the passenger's time zone. Are you saying that if the seat goes back into the award pool, it doesn't happen until 6am? That's not what AA told me, but I may be misinformed.
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Old Jun 11, 2006, 12:01 am
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Originally Posted by rrgg
I'm confused. What if someone has an award reservation that expires? It expires at midnight in the passenger's time zone. Are you saying that if the seat goes back into the award pool, it doesn't happen until 6am? That's not what AA told me, but I may be misinformed.
I believe it is midnight Central time zone (UA in ORD), NOT the passenger's time zone. AA is DFW so the same time zone as UA's, but never the passenger's time zone.

Sometimes the award seat goes right back to the pool. I just release one NZ award seat SFO to AKL as I found two (!) award seats LAX to AKL on the 2nd flight. That SFO to AKL immediately shows up in the inventory when I look it up on ANA site.
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Old Jun 11, 2006, 8:15 am
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Originally Posted by Happy
I believe it is midnight Central time zone (UA in ORD), NOT the passenger's time zone. AA is DFW so the same time zone as UA's, but never the passenger's time zone.
Maybe UA does it differently. The AA award desk just corrected me recently and said it goes by midnight in the passenger's time zone.
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Old Jun 11, 2006, 1:00 pm
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Originally Posted by rrgg
Maybe UA does it differently. The AA award desk just corrected me recently and said it goes by midnight in the passenger's time zone.
I have an AA agent told me completely the opposite in the past. I never test my luck to wait till the last hour to finalise my booking so I will never find out.
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Old Jun 11, 2006, 7:29 pm
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its nto the passenger's time zone. Pretty sure its Central US Time...My award and ticketing dateline in Jakarta, where I live mainly, is usually 1100am. Makes it hard when I need to head to their CTO here...
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Old Jun 12, 2006, 8:58 pm
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I would add - dont wait till last hour to do your ticketing

Tonight I had to ticket 2 C award tickets to NZ/Australia. The Int'l Reservation 888 phone was not working properly - I got dropped 2 times while going thru the voice recognition matrix. It took several tries within 30 minutes to finally get to talk to an agent. I called just before 9pm ET. Had I called an hour later than that, I would be sweating - these C seats on NZ are so hard to come by, I would be damned to lose them by not ticketing before deadline because of phone problem! I should have called few hours earlier so I would most likely talk to agent based in Hawaii instead of India Call Center. Though at the end the agent from India was competent and helpful the phone connection wasn't good and there were times I thought I might be disconnected.
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