LilZeppelin

it is based on empirical evidence from numerous individual experiences. Imagine, you want to go from London to Frankfurt on miles, you call, and all UA can see are the flights via Zurich, Zagreb, Copenhagen or Vienna. No LH flights at all. You know that there must be seats because ANA tool shows them, US Air offers them to you and LH Miles and More awards are abundant. It gets more annoying when you need a trans-Atlantic flight, etc.

I am sure there would be less indignation, if they offered some true explanation rather than half-truths, half-lies. Namely, why would they be blocking FRA-MUC route if they don't fly there? (Such as Mr. Kovick said: "It is an ongoing balance of ensuring we meet our customers' interest in award travel on partner carriers with United's need to generate revenue on our own flights." )

channa

A couple ideas...

Now that the cat is out of the bag, if you will, is it possible to call Inventory Management and ask them to open up seats for us that are available on available partner flights?

Another idea, it might be a compromise to eliminate the blocking for Elite members only and market it as a perk for Elites. I wonder if UA would go for that.

mahasamatman

I doubt a single article will change corporate policy like that.

bmvaughn

Personally, I've emailed 1KVoice to ask them to clarify Mr. Kovick's comment. I will post the reply when I get it.

Axey

Can't wait for the UA employees who publicly denied this was ever happening to comment. Bueller?

Nicholas

I answered that on my column's page. I'd again encourage comments there, so I can go back to UA, show them the interest this issue has generated and ask for more answers.

qasr

While I'm glad they admitted it (we all knew it was happening) I think this is probably bad news. The fact that they admit it and do nothing about it pretty much puts MP members up [the] creek--they clearly have no care about the negative PR that would come from this policy--the chance of them reversing course any time soon is pretty slim.

glex50

I think they save quite a bit, actually. A coworker of mine tried to book an award through united.com to get to VNO (Vilnius, Lithania). When he ran the search and was given the "you can't get there from here" prompt, he assumed he could just not use his miles at all.

There's also the fact that if you're relying on the agents to look up flights and haven't studied all available routings, then you're less likely to end up with an award because the agents probably won't think of the same tricks we do here.

I don't think either of these points are deceptive, of course, they're just the result of having poor search tools.

cstead

I've noticed that anytime I try to redeem an award, the first the agent does after immediately telling me that nothing is available is to try to upsell me on a Standard Award, even on a route with no UA metal. I've gotten into some nice arguments with agents trying to decline Standard Awards - they refuse to keep looking, either convinced that there's no availability or trained to not look more than once

RS250Racer

Thanks Nicholas!! Good stuff!!! ^

channa

This doesn't make much sense, because the Standard Award is the most costly award for the airline. It takes a seat from inventory that they would have otherwise sold for cash. It is much preferred to give a customer a Saver award on a different flight (even on a partner) than to lose a revenue seat it would otherwise have sold. This is especially true in a premium cabin.

RS250Racer

Everyone should go post a comment on the WT article!! ^

bmvaughn

Registered on their site over an hour ago - still no email.

Seems like posting here has a slightly lower barrier to entry

HAF

I recently booked two business awards tickets from SFO-NBO with UA miles on combination AC and LX, via YYZ/ZRH on the way out and ZRH/YUL on the return, none of the legs on UA (since there was ZERO availability for SFO-Europe on UA awards for June '09 a couple of months back when I made my reservation)

These are the lessons I learned:

1. Never depend on one agent to tell you what is available, but call back again and again, some of them are great and some do not want to even bother. Sometimes availability opens up by the time you call again

2. Use tools such as expertflyer and ana to look up availability and potential routings

3. If you have time in your hands run multiple searches on any of those tools you have found on #2 to build a model for availability. e.g. LX has a very predictable model on releasing award seats inventory on their ZRH-NBO route (different dates for business than econ)

4. For both AC and LX the expertflyer availability displayed for the days and flights I looked matched exactly what the UA agent could see

5. Be patient, and be prepared for everything. e.g. when LX eliminated their Thursday departure out of NBO, I had to spend 4 hours on the phone with United to investigate other routings (NBO-ZRH-WAW-ORD-SFO!!!) and then persuade LX to open inventory on their very next flight out of NBO

6. If you want to use miles be prepared to spend A LOT of time investigating and on the phone and also be prepared that you do not find anything at all

7. Even if I am risking comparing apples to oranges my experiences with booking Delta awards or AA awards has been much easier and found higher availability e.g. i booked my sister and her partner (w/o status) on the same itin SFO-NBO (well i am the expert in the family i guess and they all come to me for those reservations) same dates but using her AA miles, (SFO-JFK-LHR-NBO with AA and BA) the process took about 1/10 of the time it took me to do the same with United, and dare I say much more knowledgeable and polite agents than the average UAL agent. Although I have to admit that if you are lucky you might get a "star" UA agent who might be able to perform awards miracles

--e

cstead

All depends. Standard awards take a lot more miles of the books, and don't require UA to pay out to a partner.