Problem doing standard award searches to/from SMF
 

For the past two weeks, I have been unable to do a search for a standard award for any trips originating or ending at SMF on .bomb. I just get a blank calendar for the entire month, similar to when searching for a saver award where there is no availability. Seems to work fine with other airports, but it is a big problem for me as I can't check award/upgrade availability from my home airport. I'm able to use the ANA tool for award availability.

I changed my preferences to include other airports as my home airport but still didn't get any info to/from SMF for standard awards.

Any suggestions? Similar experiences?

My first search for tickets Aug 5-15, SMF-DEN was blank. Attempted a few other dates, same results

Checked seatcounter.com, shows some availability

When back to united.com, check Standard -- found availability

Check Saver and now availability shows up


:confused:

OP, If you find award availability elsewhere but can't book on .bomb, web support should be able to help you and waive the phone fee.

I'll assume that seatcounter was no joy as well, since it pulls data from .bomb.

Sometimes logging out of your account, closing your browser and relaunching everything can help, but I don't think this is one of those times. Not hard to try though.

Likely was just a temporary .bomb glitch, like we're all so used to :)

I'm actually not looking to book awards, but just to see upgrade availability for flights I've already booked. I have cleared my cache, logged in again, etc. to no avail. This has been a problem for the past two weeks, so I wouldn't consider it a temporary .bomb glitch.

Good to hear WineCountryUA got things to work after a while, but it has not been the case for me. :td:

Let's hope that UAL works this one out soon - I've e-mailed web support explaining the problem, at any rate.

Not sure why you are looking at awards bookings??

For upgrades, you can do a regular dummy booking and look at flight details in expert mode)
or
seatcounter.com

Call reservations. It's free :)

I've been having trouble using my CR-1's online lately (only gives me the "miles" option for confirmed UG's), so I just call reservations and they do it "longhand".

IMO, reservations CSR's are a better source of accurate info on UG's than .bomb.

A regular dummy booking in expert mode doesn't show upgrade or award availability, just the revenue buckets.

Yes, seatcounter is an option, but I'm frequently using the ual.com website anyway so I'd prefer to stick with a single site. Alas, unless this bug is fixed, I'll be spending more time at seatcounter.

Correct, my error

I prefer seatcounter because of the ease of seeing multiple flights and moving +-1,+-2 days

Update
 

Called web support again the other day - it took them a while to understand the problem, and ultimately I let them use my MP account and my password so show them that no availability shows up when searching for standard award availability to/from SMF. Got transferred to another person who said that this was an ongoing problem and that it also happened with BOS and BDL. No time given for when they think they might get this fixed - I'm certainly not holding out much hope for anything soon.

Very frustrating that I can't check upgrade availability to/from SMF on-line. Grr.

Second update
 

Problem FINALLY solved! Sure was a drag having to call so much to find out about upgrade inventory. Let's hope the bug doesn't show up again!