utpharmdoc

Booked a CDG-BKK-KUL next month on TG via UA and it was not a problem...

dsquared37

My experience is this is infrequent, but when it's happening all TG intra-Asia flights are affected. Eur-Asia flights are not affected however.

SFOTurtle

Exactly, and if you're booking a r/t award, you won't even have to call and waste time dealing with an incompetent agent at UA (or CO).

cohighcountry1k

Need advise of the sages here on flyertalk:

I have 3 award tickets, DEN-SGN on Oct 15. One person in Biz, 2 in Economy.

I checked both the ANA tool and Continental site - OZ has availability for all of us in Biz via SEA. Problem is United appears to have Starnet blocked the seats because UA says it's not available.

I don't have enough miles to transfer miles from UA to CO to make a clean, new booking in Biz via SEA. There are NOT award seats on the return dates so I cannot cancel my current space, transfer the miles, and then rebook.

Any thoughts on how I can make this work?

CASAFlyer

What about spliting the RT tickets into two OWs for the passengers in economy?

Then you can cancel the outward, transfer miles and book on CO. I think that CO gives you the opportunity to put an award reservation on hold for at least one day, so to play safe you could call CO, reserve the OW in business, cancel the OW on UA, transfer miles and finally ticket.

MatthewLAX

No award holds for Continental.

kilton

Strange. I keep hearing from people here that *Net blocking no longer exists.

weero

There's definitely no *Net blocking and agent-blindness for a GS.

How many seats does the UA agent see?

cohighcountry1k

There definitely IS *Net blocking for GS - at least this evidence seems to suggest that there is. Agent sees 0 seats. ANA and Continental web sites see 3 seats.

I tried breaking the ticket into two one ways, but because I originally booked it as a rt, GS line says they have to cancel the whole itin and rebook. There is no way to break the rt itin into two one ways without risking a loss of the confirmed return award space.

weero

Running out of miles is indeed a problem here - maybe you should buy some to create a buffer?

There are gazillions of other non-*Net blocking related reasons why the agent see a different availability than you do.
Most of these cases come into existence because there is more than one routing to reach the destination and the system stops searching very early.

I encountered that numerous times and the way to go about it is to reserve the award in chunks the system digests. Say I needed SIN-ZRH, the SQ nonstop is ineligible for *A inventory - hence I'd book SIN-BKK-ZRH but calling gives me no availability. Hence I book BKK-ZRH, then add SN-BKK, in coach if necessary.

This happens to me also when calling SQ or LH for an award .. it's the stupidity of the systems, not an intentional blocking.

FBKSan

Might have been. Called back a few days later and was able to book the TG flights I was after. Unclear to me whether it was blocking or something else.

Not when trying to change a segment of an already-booked award ticket on UA stock. But it's a good point generally, and it's the approach I took to book my (separate PNR) award for this same route. Do love the CO booking site, despite a few quirks/issues.

FriendlySkies

Searching for HKG-NRT in January. ANA tool/CO site show seats on the non-stop 737, but UA says they don't see any seats on the CO flight. I know I can book through CO, but I found it strange that UA would not be able to see it..

Strange to see this. I've never had issues finding award seats.

kevino

Same thing HKG-BKK on 12/26. UA agents see no availablity, but ANA and CO websites show plenty of options.

nevansm

Just booked IAD-FRA-ZRH-NRT no problem. Working on a return now...

frubio2012

So...I've done a Google search and a search on FT, but we all know how the search works. So, I was wondering, what is StarNet and furthermore, what's StarNet blocking. Yes, I know this seems like a very idiotic question, but it's still a question nonetheless.