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-   -   UA filtering NH, OZ, SQ and TG??? (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-mileage-plus-pre-merger/844741-ua-filtering-nh-oz-sq-tg.html)

UA Fan Jul 16, 2008 7:03 am


Originally Posted by CommittedLurker (Post 10041722)

On SQ from India to Australia, I actually had a 3rd ticket in C, but UA lost the booking. They actually lost 2 of them, but since I was a GS at the time, I got them to manually reinstate one of them. They weren't able to reinstate the 2nd one, and instead gave me an SWU as a goodwill gesture. The GS agent confirmed that it was UA's mistake.

.

What exactly do you mean by lost? Did you find this out when you went to SQ to check in and they were not able to find your info? What would you suggest to do to avoid this?

snic Jul 16, 2008 7:05 am


Originally Posted by holtju2 (Post 10041081)
So you don't believe that UA actively and knowingly filters *A award availability? Let's have an exercise. See what flights the starnet shows available in LH C (I class) HEL-FRA on June 23rd. None perhaps?

Do a manual sell on any of the following LH flights to see whether is come back as HK or UC.

LH3109
LH3107
LH3101
LH3103
LH3105

As a matter of fact every single LH flight HEL-FRA on 23rd of June has both I and X available and will come back us confirmed.

The argument here is not whether there is starnet filtering - everyone, including RSSRNotInIndia, agrees that there is. The question is whether it is UA that is doing the filtering, or other Star Alliance carriers that aren't letting UA have their award inventory unless UA pays extra for it. Your "exercize" won't answer that question.

snic Jul 16, 2008 7:19 am


Originally Posted by azepine00 (Post 10040600)
Plus filtering or not, good luck finding international awards with DL, CO or even AA mileage (consider BA restriction or nonexisting Qantas awards to Australia).

That would be one reason to accumulate mileage on another *A carrier instead of UA. One would lose various perks when flying UA (e.g., elite status beyond *Gold), but if the most important reason you accumulate miles is to be able to redeem miles for tickets to a wide variety of international destinations, switching to LH's Miles & More (for instance) might be the way to go.

gleff Jul 16, 2008 8:14 am


Originally Posted by snic (Post 10042571)
The question is whether it is UA that is doing the filtering, or other Star Alliance carriers that aren't letting UA have their award inventory unless UA pays extra for it.

UA is doing the filtering because Star Alliance carriers make them pay for the seats. Those carriers are not charging United more than they would charge other members of the Star Alliance who do not filter for those same seats.

UA's award chart requires fewer miles than most other *A carriers, that much is fair. But US' award chart is generally competitive with UA's...

(Of course BD offers a cash + points chart, making their miles go farther than UA's and without any filtering.)

zhuyanfei Jul 16, 2008 8:27 am

The availability of UA's saver awards is really a big problem.
I checked for ORD-PVG/NRT routes of Dec and Jan, there are barely anything business or first showing up.
I have to say UA's saver awards is a lot worse than AA's.

rjque Jul 16, 2008 9:05 am


Originally Posted by snic (Post 10042622)
That would be one reason to accumulate mileage on another *A carrier instead of UA. One would lose various perks when flying UA (e.g., elite status beyond *Gold), but if the most important reason you accumulate miles is to be able to redeem miles for tickets to a wide variety of international destinations, switching to LH's Miles & More (for instance) might be the way to go.

Not to mention that azepine00 is simply wrong about poor award availability on AA and DL. AA has the best availability of any of the US airlines, and DL is beating UA (with the *A filtering) for a possible trip to Berlin later this year. I expect AA's availability will eventually get even better with the opening of Heathrow, as this may result in the lifting of the US government's ban on AA and BA cooperating on US-LHR routes.

ual744777sta Jul 16, 2008 9:37 am


Originally Posted by zhuyanfei (Post 10042962)
The availability of UA's saver awards is really a big problem.
I checked for ORD-PVG/NRT routes of Dec and Jan, there are barely anything business or first showing up.
I have to say UA's saver awards is a lot worse than AA's.

Awards to PVG and NRT in December are hard all around. Even checking the KVS/NH tool there is nothing available. Awards to Asia during Christmas/New Years are limited and even blacked out by certain *A carriers. For these awards you need to book them at least several months ahead. This is just part of the seasonal travel period.

CommittedLurker Jul 16, 2008 12:13 pm


Originally Posted by UA Fan (Post 10042567)
What exactly do you mean by lost? Did you find this out when you went to SQ to check in and they were not able to find your info? What would you suggest to do to avoid this?

No, my flights aren't until October.

I was just checking my itineraries online about 10 days after ticketing and noticed two of them were missing. Subsequent phone calls to SQ to check on these tickets confirmed that they no longer existed.

I was told that somehow, the interface between UA's and SQ's computer did not work right, causing cancellation. That is what I was told. Who knows exactly what happened.

All I know is that 2 ticketed reservations automatically cancelled out and miles were redeposited in my account.

I now check every few weeks on my 3 tickets.

After issuing an award ticket through UA, the best thing to do is to first call SQ and confirm your reservation. Ask them to email you a copy, and also ask for SQ's PNR (different from UA's). You can then go to SQ's website, enter in your last name and SQ's PNR, and it will show your eticket, as recorded in SQ's system.

I guess that would be the safest method of checking to see that your booking is preserved.

azepine00 Jul 16, 2008 1:26 pm


Originally Posted by CommittedLurker (Post 10041722)

... since I was a GS at the time,
...
I am self employed. I don't have someone else picking up my tab for my travels. I am not a consultant etc either that I get reimbursed by my customers.


Originally Posted by CommittedLurker (Post 10041722)
The only reason I have put with UA's shoddy product and service was for the mileage redemption.

This should be a lesson to all self-employed GS ...;)

sy7 Jul 16, 2008 2:30 pm

I wanted to post another experience in booking premium award seats on the Asian carriers (and yes, I am trying to book as many tickets as possible before the imminent arrival of the fuel surcharges :p).

Basically, I think some agents aren't very good at using the reservation system. For example, I asked to be booked on SQ11 (LAX-SIN), and the agent said she could only see Y but not C or F seats on the flight. I knew there was F/C availability (was looking on the ANA tool at the same time and had called UA a few hours earlier to confirm availability), but she didn't sound that competent so I simply thanked her and hung up. The next person I got was much more efficient (you can tell from the initial tone), and there was no problem at all in booking the flights I wanted. So, just because an agent isn't able to "find" C/F award space on a flight doesn't necessarily mean it was blocked by Starnet!

qasr Jul 16, 2008 2:34 pm


Originally Posted by sy7 (Post 10045103)
I wanted to post another experience in booking premium award seats on the Asian carriers (and yes, I am trying to book as many tickets as possible before the imminent arrival of the fuel surcharges :p).

Basically, I think some agents aren't very good at using the reservation system. For example, I asked to be booked on SQ11 (LAX-SIN), and the agent said she could only see Y but not C or F seats on the flight. I knew there was F/C availability (was looking on the ANA tool at the same time and had called UA a few hours earlier to confirm availability), but she didn't sound that competent so I simply thanked her and hung up. The next person I got was much more efficient (you can tell from the initial tone), and there was no problem at all in booking the flights I wanted. So, just because an agent isn't able to "find" C/F award space on a flight doesn't necessarily mean it was blocked by Starnet!

Right. Where UA isn't trying to scam MP members, they're roadblocking them with incompetence. This makes things so much better!

funOFflying Jul 16, 2008 2:38 pm

Why do we need any other proof?
 

Originally Posted by gleff (Post 10037210)
There have been multiple memos instructing agents not to perform manual sells. Asking straight up for a manual sell is unlikely to be a useful technique.

I think it speaks for itself. Some inventory is blocked, manual search unravels blocked inventory. As simple as that.

sy7 Jul 16, 2008 2:39 pm


Originally Posted by qasr (Post 10045133)
Right. Where UA isn't trying to scam MP members, they're roadblocking them with incompetence. This makes things so much better!

At least incompetence is a lot easier to get around (for the savvy FTer) than trying to convince an agent to do the equivalent of a "manual sell!" :)

funOFflying Jul 16, 2008 2:59 pm

UA even filters itself!
 
DO you remember, may be 2-2.5 year ago UA announced with fanfare special inventory for 1K and saver award availability on every UA flight?

I have been trying to book business saver award on SFO-SYD route for May 2009 with no success. Nothing is available, but seat map shows empty business.
Policy was quietly reversed, i guess?
We are taken for a ride again and again. UA makes loud announces but they seem to filled with empty promises. New route to Moscow in press release some time ago!!!
It is postponed now , but just try to find this information on UA website.:td:

as219 Jul 16, 2008 3:10 pm


Originally Posted by anishub (Post 10041364)
For the last one month or so, I had tried booking an award in C from NYC-DPS. As I have read many horror stories from other posts about getting to DPS (the MPM issues, the TPAC and TATL issues and no stop policies, coupled with Starnet blockings), my search came to an end on 7/3/08 with an agent getting me a SQ25 and SQ22 as the outgoing and incoming flights, all in C ^^^.

What I thought of as an end of the misery of getting the best seat in 'C' turned out to be the start of mega headache :mad:

I needed to change the inbound date as I had accepted the earlier date just to protect the outbound. Now I found same SQ22 available on the desired date, but the next agent told me this is an 'illegal' routing. And now any agent who looks at this booking tells me "this is an illegal routing, but you can go ahead and travel, if you tried to change anything on this itenarary, the whole booking would be cancelled". :mad::mad:

I am still trying to find any carrier that will take me over-water (TATL) on my desired dates. There are tones of 'C' in ANA tool, non is existant to my beloved UA/MP CSRs. Travel date in in next two weeks, I will try for another week and if nothing turns-up, will have to cancel look for it another time.:td:

I don't know if it's technically correct to say that your routing is "illegal," but it's certainly RTW. Although you will find agents who will book SQ25/26 at TPAC levels, they're not supposed to, and once it's caught by an agent, you won't lose it but you can't change it. You might get lucky by calling back, but tread lightly...

Last year, I booked JFK-SIN-BKK-HKT on SQ at the TPAC rate (on SQ 25/26). I thought this was the way it was supposed to be, so over time I made lots of changes of dates. Finally, I picked a resort much closer to KBV. But when I called to change it, that's when an agent (a) informed me I had been undercharged, (b) said I wouldn't lose it but could make no more changes, and (c) put a note in my record saying that it shouldn't be changed. I begged with SDs to no avail. So I made do.

Personally, I think it's pretty bad for them to change their tune mid-course -- if they let you book it with the understanding that the route is legal, then why should you be denied future changes? But they do have a point, too.


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