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Don’t believe the award calendar on united.com!
The calendar should show you for an entire month whether any given day has Saver award space in economy, in a premium cabin, or in both. But the calendar is currently showing no Saver award space on days where there is Saver award space.
This is very inconvenient for award bookers. And it’s the opposite problem of United.com’s infamous phantom award availability issue where award space that doesn’t really exist displays as available.
What’s the problem with United’s award calendar? What kinds of examples are we seeing of this? How do we overcome the issue?
United.com’s award calendar display is fairly intuitive. Dates highlighted in yellow contain Saver level economy space. Blue dates contain Saver level business and/or first class award space. Green dates have both economy and premium cabin Saver award space. Dates that are shaded white are supposed to be devoid of Saver award space and should normally be ignored.
Running some recent queries returned some surprising results. While searching for a simple domestic itinerary for a client of our Award Booking Service, we were met with mostly white dates seemingly bereft of award space.
However, after clicking through a few of these dates, we found a great US Airways itinerary buried at the bottom of the results page under partner availability!
At first, we considered chalking this up to the closing merger between US Airways and American Airlines. As US Airways transitions out of the Star Alliance and into oneworld, perhaps there were issues syncing award space with United.
Does this problem only occur with US Airways itineraries?
This isn’t unique to US Airways flights. I searched itineraries from Chicago to Geneva, Switzerland and pulled up the single day in April with white (no) award space.
Sure enough, there were two itineraries on Star Alliance partners (Lufthansa and Austrian) that somehow slipped through the cracks.
Both had long layovers but were certainly decent itineraries, especially in light of United’s brutal new partner award chart beginning on February 1st. Though the Austrian itinerary was a mixed-cabin award, the most important transatlantic segment was in business class. Scott reviewed Austrian’s flat-bed business product from Vienna to Chicago in this post.
I ran a few more queries and found the same results. United.com is notorious for not displaying West Coast to Europe award space, so I looked up Frankfurt to Los Angeles in September.
As with the Chicago to Geneva search, there were plenty of economy Saver itineraries on the white dates I clicked. I was able to find three fantastic itineraries on Air Canada and Lufthansa. If you only judged award space by United’s calendar, each would have been missed!
Don’t forget the Asian-based Star Alliance carriers. They aren’t exempt from this problem. A routine search from San Diego to Seoul, South Korea paints a bleak picture on award availability.
The highlighted date actually has a two-stop itinerary, with the longest segment (SEA->ICN) in business class.
United.com appears to have issues displaying Star Alliance partner award space, but United’s own award space should properly mirror the calendar, right?
This problem isn’t even exclusive to United’s Star Alliance partners. There are many white dates that contain United saver award space! As proof, I searched for a flight from Baltimore to San Francisco as part of a larger award I’m constructing.
Many dates displayed viable award space, but the exact date I wanted (October 17th) indicated I was out of luck. However, upon further review I found out that wasn’t the case!
Are there any patterns to this?
This problem is related to multi-stop itineraries. You can use the trick to display non-stop award space on United.com to avoid some of these issues.
Anecdotally, if your multi-stop search returns many dates in a month with award space (yellow, blue, or green), make sure to also peruse the scattered white dates as well. They will likely contain award space.
Other than that, this issue appears to have no common themes. It’s not isolated to US Airways, which is about to depart the Star Alliance. Other partners such as Air Canada, Lufthansa, Austrian, and Asiana are not exempt.
How do you combat the problem?
Always search segment by segment, especially if you are trying to construct a multi-stop itinerary. It’s one of the Eight Habits of Highly Effective Award Bookers!
If you search “Kansas City to Tokyo”, you are likely going to encounter this issue. Instead locate award space from the the US to Tokyo first (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Denver, New York-JFK and Newark are all good starts) and then work to connect yourself to that international gateway city.
Always verify award space using the ANA tool as well. It’s the truest indicator of Star Alliance award space. ANA requires you have miles in your account before performing a Star Alliance partner search, but that’s easily side-stepped using this workaround.
Recap
The United award search tool is being worked hard right now, especially because of United’s massive devaluation. It’s a usable search tool, but it’s not without its faults.
Many times its calendar will return dates that indicate no Saver level award availability. After clicking those specific dates, however, good itineraries will often appear.
Don’t let United.com be your guiding light when constructing awards. It’s not perfect by any means. United.com doesn’t display Brussels Airlines award space and recently began to hide Singapore award space. Remember to search segment by segment and focus on securing the most difficult (usually transoceanic) leg first. If a date flashes no space, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re out of luck.
Hat Tip to JB for Bringing This to My Attention
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Love Milevalue!
I have 59K miles in Miles and More, and 400K in United.
I found a Lufthansa business class flight EWR to Stockholm on United’s site, and thought I’d use up my Miles and More miles since it’s Lufthansa.
Using Miles and More, the taxes came to about $450.00. Using United miles, for the exact same flights, the taxes were around $37.00.
Seesm really strange…
I agree it’s strange, but United collects fuel surcharges on zero awards and Miles & More collects them on most awards. Here’s a primer on using M&M miles ==> https://milevalu.wpengine.com/miles-more-program-primer-six-great-uses-and-two-bad-ones-of-the-lufthansa-cards-50k-sign-up-bonus/
I had several of those instances where in fact the so-called “great itinerary” was phantom space – it didn’t show up on ANA’s tool or on the phone with the United agents. So be careful!
Thanks for the info.
Scott: Do you rely on travel tools like awardnexus or wandering aramean’s travel tools? If not, are there limitations?
I use both. AN has no proprietary info, it just searches other sites faster than you can on your own. Wandering Aramean’s site has no proprietary info (as far as I know), but allows you to set alerts, which is awesome.
I have noticed this as well the last few days. I have found award space searching by segment, but then when I try to put it together with a multiple destination search, the flights I want no longer show up (even when I select non-stop and 50 flights). Is there a workaround for this?
Make sure to grab as many segments of your trip as you can online, place them on hold using one of these tricks (https://milevalu.wpengine.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-united-award-holds/), and then phone a United agent to add the rest of the segments and complete the booking. Use polite persistence to get the agent to waive the phone reservation fee, citing IT issues.
I have been seeing this “issue” with the coloring of the calendar for about 8 months. First noticed when booking a trip to Italy for my wife and myself last May.
So have you reported the issues to United?
I assume this is an IT issue that they aren’t really eager to resolve….
I’ve noticed this for some time as I book awards with United. There are partner flights at the bottom of the list often enough to make it worthwhile to click through on the “white” date and check. I haven’t seen any pattern to it, and I haven’t had any problem booking those flights, though I only book a few a year, so my experience is limited.
I was surprised that United itineraries also were hidden inside “white” dates. There is no clear pattern, as far as I know.
I’ve seen this issue regularly ever since the merger closed almost two years ago. For each date, you just need to quickly scan down the list of flights, looking for blue “select” buttons.
On the plus side – since the merger, you can book a single UA Standard award with partner seats taken out of Saver inventory (for example SFO-FRA on UA in YN or HN; FRA-another European destination in X). This was not allowed pre-merger (you had to book two separate awards), and as far as I know is not allowed by other carriers.
If you are a UA Elite, Wandering Aramean’s search tools do show availability of XN inventory.
One other UA award search tip. Click “Advanced Search”. If “Number of flights to display” is set to “25” or “default”, select “50” to get a larger selection of itineraries (particularly partner inventory). Recently, this trick allowed me to find options flying to Europe on Swiss that I could not have found otherwise.
Your final paragraph is immensely helpful! Many thanks.
I have too, but I never thought to post it. Sometimes you see something so much you forget it would be useful info that not everyone knows.
Is this an issue with United’s search engine or is it because of World Cup that I cannot find any returning flight from GRU to practically anywhere in the world on July 14 – 15, etc???
Probably World Cup