Dumb question re airfares...
 

Hello,
Not being an experience traveler I have a question.
I am looking into booking airfare for next June for my husband, myself and my inlaws. The inlaws have frequent flyer miles from United. Can someone please tell me if you can only use those if you book directly from United or would a service like Orbitz or Expedia be able to apply the mileage as well.
I asked the inlaws and they werent sure, so I was hoping that someone here might be able to help me.
Thanks for your time.

In my experience with using air miles, they are only redeemable directly with the airline. You have to call them to book. Keep in mind, also, that black out dates apply for air miles tickets.

I don't use United's program, but I would imagine that they also offer an online booking option. I gather that you want to match your itineraries up between the paid tickets and the FF tickets. The most cost-effective way to do this is likely to be a two-step process. First, you should book the FF tickets first (as soon as possible, if you're finding availability).

You can check fares for the paid tickets now and maybe you will get lucky, but fares are often not as attractive this far in advance. You may therefore be better off booking them later -- possibly not until sometime in the first quarter of next year. It makes no sense to pay a premium on the paid tickets now in order to corral the "free" ones and you don't want to hold up bagging the free ones while you wait for a good fare, either. Just keep checking regularly and whenever you happen to find an attractive fare, grab it. To alert you to potential deals, you could also set up a fare watcher on Travelocity for your desired origin-destination.

DebiC, your question is not at all dumb. All of us were inexperienced travelers at one time.

I have been a United frequent flyer for many years. In my experience, you cannot use FF miles to book with on-line booking services like Expedia or Travelocity. United now has an on-line booking option for FF tickets, but I got better results by simply calling the airline.

I think flyboy's advice and strategy is excellent.

If you are using frequent flyer miles theres no need to book on other search engines b/c you are just recieving a free ticket and don't need to pay at all, so why try and book on another site anyway? Its all the same

Thank you everyone,
That was what I thought but I wanted to make sure...
Debi

Just a heads up- but when you CALL UNITED, find out the dates that your frequent fliers points can be used on and BOOK those tkts FIRST....then get your paid tkts to match the same dates....

Sometimes there are dates using FF miles that are already either BOOKED UP or BLACKED OUT....

Why is everybody talking about blackout dates? As far as I know UA does not have any.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

There are NO blackout dates for using United FF miles for travel on United Airlines.However, if you want to use your United FF miles for travel on partner carriers, eg.,All Nippon,AirCanada,Varig,etc,then the partners do in fact impose certain black out dates.