Did you try booking one way tickets to and from? I just booked first to Shanghai for Thanksgiving at 145,000 miles.

What they r telling me is that there are no seats currently available in biz class in any of the combination of directions. I did not specifically ask for one ways and that's worth a try. Thanks for the idea.

Go to the Continental website and use their search tool to look for availability. If you find availability then open a OnePass account if you don't have one already. Then you can transfer the miles from United MP to Continental OP and buy the ticket.

Well, I found a couple of dates for WAS-BKK roundtrip with all-first class. A lot of the options have mixed classes of service and many/most of them are a mix of first and economy. I didn't look at the mixed-class business awards. Problem is that the economy legs are long (5 to 10 hours).

mrwunrfl -- thank u so much! I actually was able to figure some routings that will work and don't have any economy seats in the routing. Do u know how long it takes to transfer the miles from UA to Continental? anyway to have the seats held while this is being done?

Ok, a business class award, 250,000 miles for two people:
Dec 6: DCA-JFK-ICN-HAN
Jan 17: BKK-LAX-CLT-DCA

The domestic legs are all USAirways first class. The outbound international legs are on Asiana. BKK-LAX is the Thai Air nonstop. The international legs are all biz class.

That is exactly 6 weeks.

I just saw your reply. You can transfer the miles online and it is instantaneous. I will get the link.

I just posted it a second time to a different thread. If you have the miles, I recommend getting an all-first trip in at least one direction.

Here is the info:

Transfer redeemable miles between your OnePass and Mileage Plus accounts. Give it a spin at united.com/transfermymiles or continental.com/transfermymiles (both take you to the same place).

Match Elite status and combine Elite earnings for your OnePass and Mileage Plus accounts. For those of you who have Elite Qualification miles and segments/points in both OnePass and Mileage Plus, you can now combine these earnings to earn Elite status, Regional Upgrades and Systemwide Upgrades. Go to united.com/combinemyactivity or continental.com/combinemyactivity for all the details.

Thank YOU SO MUCH! Because we are using 2 frequent flyer accounts does it make sense to book on the phone? or just to 2 separate bookings online?

I don't know if it matters, but I don't think so. You could ask the agent. I suppose there would be a fee for doing it over the phone. But you could let the agent do a few searches for you and maybe they might even find something better.

A few of the itineraries to/from SGN and maybe HAN routed through BKK. So you should be able to close the open jaw on the award ticket by using it to also fly BKK-HAN/SGN or v.v.

I think I would do it over the phone for two tix. The paranoid me comes up with a scenario where one ticket gets booked and the mysterious computers remove the other seats from availability.

Yes, that's my fear also -- its probably money well spent calling an agent. We actually found a variety of options leaving at the end of Dec and coming back late Feb. Again, I appreciate your help.

Well, we threw caution to the wind and and using 2 computers side by side actually booked our tixs online. One more question for u--could only get seats assigned on the UA flights. How do we get the seats for the other carriers?

Call Continental and get reservation/confo numbers for the other carriers. Have them linked by CO. You could also ask CO to assign seats but expect the answer to be no. Then contact the other carriers (website or call) for seat assignments. Have the ticket numbers and flight info handy.

Have the tickets linked,i mean.

When you call CO you could ask them to add on the BKK-HAN/SGN leg onto the award to close the open jaw. My assumption being that the tix can be changed/cancelled with no fee within 24 hours, but that might not be a valid assumption. Am curious to know what you got.

what route, carriers.

As u thought, CO referred me to the carriers and we're set.

Outbound 1st class both legs UA for IAD-Rome & Thai Air Rome - BKK.
Rtn in Biz class 2 legs Japan Air SGN - NRT & on ANA NRT-ORD Economy+ on UA ORD-DCA. A few long layovers, but happy to get the seats. We were trying to avoid ORD in winter, but if we get stuck on the way back, who cares??? CO said no changes, but I didn't really push them to make any.
Still puzzled as to why CO would have seats on the same airlines and UA not.

Thank you so much for your help! I was so tired of calling UA and getting nowhere. Now on to planning the trip itself...

yestravel wondered: Still puzzled as to why CO would have seats on the same airlines and UA not.

Answer: Because United had instituted a de facto policy of utter contempt, at every level, for their customers. In this case, it's the implementation of a system called "Starnet" where United will not let its Mileage Plus members buy award seats that United's partners are willing to sell. That's hardly the only instance of United's corporate contempt for its customers: about 5 years ago, United moved most of its telephone operations offshore, and huge numbers of people have found it incredibly frustrating to deal with United over the phone.

If you have elite status with United, you have a reason, or at least an excuse, to fly with them because you'll get Economy-plus seating. If you don't have elite status with United, there is absolutely no reason to fly with them. If you must fly with them, I'd suggest that you consider joining one of their partner's FF programs (Air Canada or Lufthansa), and park your miles in those programs whenever you fly on United.

Don

That is wonderful, yestravel.

Living in the D.C. area is a reason to use United.

Hopefully, the "starnet blocking" that UA does will go away when the MP and OP programs merge and we will continue to have the award availabiltiy that CO offers now.