Korean Air SkyPass Eliminates Holds On Award Tickets

Lucky, how long do Chase UR points normally take to transfer to Korean Air Skypass?

Lucky, PLEASE hurry up with the strategy for how to redeem Marriott air+hotel... times running out. Thank you.

@Lucky

I called them last week and was able to place an award on a one month hold. I wonder when this change went into effect

You can bet people were abusing it.

Friend of mine just put an award ticket on hold two days ago. This must be super fresh. How does it affect existing holds?

I will reach out and see if they eliminated his hold or are grandfathering it in, as its for travel less than 30 days from now.

Two thoughts - first, while skypass restricts award tickets to family, they allow miles to be pooled for tickets. As your error message suggests, if my husband has 10k miles and I have 115k, I can book tickets for both of us. Second, I never actually used holds on KE because UR xfers used to be instant. The fact that both are now gone is annoying.

Maybe a silly question but on all these awards transfers do I actually need to be a member of SkyPass or other transfer partners? And then sign up to transfer the miles from ultimate rewards etc?

If true this completely sucks, because neither Chase nor SPG transfers are anything close to instant - both take at least a couple of days.

With this, and the drastic reduction in award space, SkyPass has gone from one of the best programs out there to just one of the many where they make it really hard to redeem.

@Adam - yes, you sign up for the transfer partner program. Make sure the name you use to sign up is the same as on your chase account. Then note your account number, so you can enter it through the UR portal for transferring points.

I ran into this change myself last night as I was calling to extend the hold on a res. They explained that not only is there a policy change on holds, but there is also a system change. They said it was literlly just a few days ago. I told them gee thanks for the heads up. lol! They had no way of extending a hold. The only option was to cancel the reservation and rebook, with the caveat that there's always the possibility that while doing that you might lose the seat. They did that and it works this time.... So, your mileage may vary as far as short term holds if you are waiting for miles to transfer. This was an existing reservation so maybe it wont work for a new reservation.

Count me in as someone who is glad this policy is coming into effect.

Sick and tired of never finding any award space on KE because selfish people put holds on flights they either don't have the points for or because they want backup.

Echo what Kevin said!! I'm glad about this.

Nothing good lasts forever in the points game. I bet a few bad apples held the award seats and then cancelled at the last minute. This probably caused some frustrations between Korean Air and its partners

Of course offering unlimited holds begs abuse. How about just limiting the holds - like AA does? Either that, or bring back instantaneous points transfers.

While I agree with the people who object to others holding up award tickets just so they can have a backup, I do think its appropriate for airlines to allow holds for like a one or two week period so that people can transfer points over etc. People should be forced to book the flight or take their chances waiting for another redemption. No reason why others should be prevented from using their miles. If they want to book the award and eat the redeposit fee fine, but just holding tickets with no penalty and without a real desire to actually fly is uncool.

people who get points via transferring are not loyal Korean air customers.

This must be really new. I just successfully put an award flight on hold about a few hours ago.

This is unfortunate. It took 7 calendar days to transfer Chase UR points to SkyPass (sent 07/19/18, received 07/26/18). Thankfully I had the award on hold for two weeks.

Looks like the ability to hold is back?

Not sure which to believe now.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/did-korean-air-skypass-end-award-booking-holds/

I just put an itinerary on hold until September 5th via phone.