lenz6

Several months ago, we tried using our United miles for flights on Star Alliance partner Air Canada and were told all seats were booked. But we could see, on-line, that there were loads of empty seats. When I asked if more seats would be released closer to the flight date, the operator said yes. Air Canada clearly wants to wait to see if they could sell the seats first before giving them over to United FF members.
Is there any "magic" date after which this happens? Or is there any way to track this on-line? Basically I'm looking for an alternative to calling every day.
Thanks for the help!

RoamsAround

I can only give you general information since I don't belong to United's or a Star Alliance FF program but basically all FF programs have similar procedures.

FF seats normally first become available 330 days prior to the flight. The number of available FF seats on any given flight is limited and there's no way to predict how many there will be nor how long they will last. They usually don't last very long. Some airlines will have FF seats available if you are willing to use more miles to acquire those seats (for instance 50,000 miles vs. 25,000 miles.

If the initial inventory of FF seats is exhausted the airlines sometimes release additional seats at various times but there is no set rule as to when or even if they my be released. Chances are the release date if it occurs will be closer to the flight date rather than earlier. As you already surmised the airlines would much rather sell the seats rather than give them away.

I don't know of anyway to track when FF seats become available for any given airline or any given flight. You just have to keep checking.

Maybe others have more info for you.

DonTopaz

The problem may not be Air Canada, but United. It is entirely possible that Air Canada has made the award seats available to United and other Star Alliance members, but United has decided not to make those seats available to you. If you had miles in <b>any other Star Alliance program</b> and AC made the seats available, you'd be able to purchase them with your miles in that other program.

United, possibly alone among carriers, instituted an especially draconian system called Starnet several years ago. With Starnet, United severely limits the number of award seats on partner airlines that they (United) will allow their own FF members to purchase with United miles. This is just one of many, many examples of United showing contempt for their customers (offshore call centers staffed with hopelessly undertrained personnel is another).

My advice is to keep trying, and just as important, stop collecting United miles. If you have to keep flying United/Continental, you can still put your miles in an Air Canada or Lufthansa/SWISS FF plan. Good luck,

Don
Owner .. Don Topaz Travel

yestravel

I had a similar problem in May trying to book a trip thru UA ff program. I was advised on this board by mrwunrfl to look at Continental and see if they show seats since they do not limit the ff seats on partners the way UA does (what DonTopaz described). I did this and sure enough there were seats to our destination. I already had a Continental account that I hadn't used in many years, but it was still active. I was able to transfer my miles from UA into Continental and book the tickets thru Continental. I did this in probably less than an hours time from start to finish. This ability to transfer miles between the 2 airlines is still going on as far as I know. Perhaps you should look into doing this. Here's the thread about this which may explain things better for you
http://www.fodors.com/community/air-...for-seasia.cfm
Good Luck!

simpsonc510

I was just going to say, look at Continental. I just did an around the world trip (to Asia via HKG) and by way of FRA on the return. CO has a much better offering of FF ticket availability. DH and I will fly first class (saver) to BKK for the Christmas/New Year holidays. These saver tickets were booked using UA miles, but on CO site. Part of the trip is on Thai in first class. Looking forward to that!

Carol

rkkwan

Where are flying to anyways? The key to using FF miles is to be <b>flexible</b>. For example, I've claimed several trans-Pacific flights just this year using CO miles to Hong Kong, and I never never care which airline they let me. I've used CO, UA, AC, US; via places like EWR, YYZ, YVR, SFO, HNL/GUM, PHX, etc. I don't care which airline, as long as it's around the date I want to fly.

To demand a specific flight on a specific date while using FF miles is asking for disappointment and frustration.

Orlando_Vic

I agree with the 330-day standard. Knowing that was invaluable when I (successfully) booked RT, premium class trans-pacific tickets twice on Qantas.

A number of people on Flyertalk swear by Expert Flyer http://www.expertflyer.com I have never used it though.

For now, you may want to research this further on Flyertalk here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...solidated-681/

_____________________________________________
Vic's travels: http://my.flightmemory.com/vogilvie

mrwunrfl

Lots of good advice here, especially from yestravel.

Being flexible, which rkkwan mentioned, also means, to me, being flexible on your choice of carriers.

I think that the best thing to do is to use the online award search at the Continental website. The search results display options on multiple carriers, including AC (and USAir which is probably an option, as well as CO and UA).

You could also try the online award search at the United website. The search does provide a Star Alliance search option but you have to look for it and it is a separate search. Looking for availability in other cabins requires separate searches. Continental's search is so much better.

I just did a search for a roundtrip LAX-YYZ (Toronto). United shows availability for my dates (Sept 16-19). The *A results only show United, no other *A carriers.

When I did a search at Continental it shows, on one results listing, an outbound seat on AC (a redeye nonstop), the UA and CO options I saw at united, plus a connection in PHL on US. The results also show all of the cabin classes.

The lack of partner award seat availability is known on flyertalk as "starnet blocking".