Book same itinerary with separate FF accounts?
 

May wife and I may be booking a trip from our individual United Mileage Plus accounts. Given the moving target of flight availability and seat assignment what's the best way to do this?

One option is to be sitting side by side, me on the computer and she on her iPad. We log in to our separate accounts and, ensuring we can chose the same flights, move through the booking process in parallel.

Or, just call the airline and have them do it (for a fee, I think)?

I think you should call the airline. If you do that, you should be able to have the airline link the two record locators. In the event that the equipment changes or there are other issues requiring a change of seats, schedules, or equipment, any changes should keep your seats and schedule together. If you book the itineraries separately, you run the risk of not being able to get adjacent award seats or being re-scheduled on different flights.

Thanks Jeff801. Yes, that's the right answer. The inevitable schedule or equipment changes should be considered. Will proceed that way once our decision is made.

BTW, I like your travel tip, "Study the history of your destination". We always do that and it adds a greatly to the trip enjoyment.

You can do it online, as you planned and then call airline after you have record locators and they will link the, for you.

Thant could work too DebitNM, and saves $50...

Thanks.

I do this on one computer with two different browsers.

I've actually done it before with AA. The "problem" that occurs is when there is a change in schedule. AA didn't have a "hard link" together on the two locator numbers.

When we went to Argentina 4 years ago, our schedule was changed 3-4 times by AA and once by me.

What I found is that being very nice to the AA elite desk person and explaining the situation as an AA change, that there was no change fee incurred.

I would do it either simultaneously or sequentially online and call to link the two reservations. I have done that in the past.

A related issue is booking one spouse's flight using miles and buying the other spouse's flight with money. In the past,I have done it online, booking the miles flight first, and then called to have them linked.

Just recently I decided to do it by calling UA and the agent got it all mixed up, to the point that UA actually cancelled my tickets because they said I had done it online and hadn't confirmed it later. I called a second time and found a competent agent who got things striaghtened out, after a waste of much of my time.

Good luck!

Thanks everyone, as usual good info from Fodorites. OK, I think I'll do as DebitNM and tom18 suggest: we'll book it ourselves, then call United to do the linkage.

That should solve the "problem" suggested by Jeff801 and reported by Rastaguy as actually being a problem.

J62, the dual browser idea is good to keep in mind, but my wife will want to try doing it on her iPad. That can be a fallback if necessary.

You are going to first do a search for two passengers, of course, to find that availability. That availability didn't appear in the last 5 minutes and won't disappear in the next 5 min. (ok, probably). Having your passenger and credit card info stored with each MP account makes it quick.

Will your flight(s) all be on United?

mrwunrfl, doing the preliminary search for two passengers makes sense. I suppose one of us could get locked out if we happened to chose a route that had only one available seat.

No, all the flights will not be on United, the final leg will be on a United partner, probably Lufthansa. There will be either one or two stops, depending on routing.

United can apparently link your PNRs for the UA flights but I don't if that means that your LH PNRs will be linked. Ask when you call UA and get the LH PNRs in any case.

With the LH PNRs (confirmation codes/numbers) you can select those seats at the Lufhansa website. After you book, you can check your reservation at united dot com - it might show the LH confo numbers there. Or call LH to get seats and maybe link the two.

Thanks mrwunrfl, will ensure that our Lufthansa leg is also linked.

I have enough miles in my account to get both tix, which would simplify, but my wife's miles will expire soon. She the right amount to cover this trip, so we want to use them.

There are many ways to keep her miles from expiring.

True enough, but using them is one way.

if you are booking with miles you can do two one ways - you do one way your spouse does the other
that's how we have made sure we are on the same PNR. any other "linking' is hit and miss

newtome, now that's a good idea! It doesn't cost any more miles to do two one way trips, I think.

Thanks, I'm liking that thought.

That is a good idea if there is no stopover. A drawback would be the doubling of the redeposit fees if the tix are cancelled

I'm pretty sure that United "sells" mileage award tickets on a one-way basis. That is, if a one way ticket costs 30,000 miles, a round trip costs 60,000 miles.

So it would seem you could accomplish your objective by buying two trips over with your account, and two trips back with your wife's account. Then the linkage would be automatic.