How much difference does status level make in saver level award availability?
 

How different is saver level award availability for different levels of status? It seems fairly difficult to get saver level awards as a General Member.

1ks have extra saver award availability. Everyone else sees the same pool. That said, united has some of the best saver award availability out there. check out the the recent wsj article on this - united and aa do a much better job then the other airlines.

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Yup, other than NY it's all the same. I've never had a problem redeeming UA awards, even a few days out.

Supposedly some seats are seat aside for 1Ks, but they seem to be few and far between.

UA966, IAD-FCO, 4/17 - NY7 XY0

While searching for upgradeable flights, I have seen a number of flights with 1K NY availability where normal saver awards were zero'ed out.

Other than 1K's, there is no difference in availability for any other level. Also, 1K's only get special availability on Y awards, and not C or F awards.

It's misleading to say that 1Ks have extra availability. There's a separate 1K inventory bucket which might have extra availability, but frequently has the same inventory as the standard economy bucket.

Maybe there's extra availabilty domestically, but I haven't been able to book a saver award to Asia for at least four years. I've asked reservations to find me ANY date I might be able to use a saver award to Asia and they have never found one.

If both the 1K inventory and the normal inventory for economy awards have seats and a 1K calls. What bucket do they pull from?

I would hope that they would use the 1K bucket and leave the rest for the unworthy.

Does anyone know how this works?

OK, stupid question, but how does one see the separate buckets of availability for NY for 1ks and non-1ks?

goto www.seatcounter.com

type in the orgin and destination and date and put "ua" in TWICE for your favorite airline

This will show you the available fare buckets for the flights your checking

(available if you scroll down on the results page)
N: Econonmy Class Award
E: Free Economny Class Ticket 1K

E is a revenue bucket now. Has been for a few years.

This is a hit or miss, but status could make a difference between a phone agent telling you "no, there's no availability" and making a call to the inventory desk to see if space can be cleared.

A few times I've tried to get an F award and one of the segments only had Y. After checking my chances at clearing the waitlist, only to discover an empty F cabin, they called to clear my WL right away. They can do this for anybody, but are more likely to do it for status-bearing members.

E does show the 1K award availability, at least on seatcounter.

Seat counter is handy for finding awards. You can identify the problem segments and search alternatives.