Questions and Answers

I have a business award ticket booked and confirmed with a ticket # from AKL-SFO on United using Lifemiles in Sept 2017.United just suspended this route for the Summer. Who do I contact, UA or Lifemiles, to get rebooked? Also the only options seem to be nonstop on Air New Zealand (no award availability) or Air New Zealand to SYD and then UA to SFO (also no award availability). What can I expect? Thanks for your help in advance.

Call UA Res to see what they can do as you are on their metal. I would find your UA PNR first through Lifemiles and just say you have a UA reservation.

Ouch, that sucks.

In [I]theory[/I] Lifemiles owns the ticket, and should work with the Star Liaison to accommodate you on another flight. In practice, since Avianca doesn’t fly to New Zealand, and are generally impossible to work with, I don’t see that happening.

So you’re probably going to have to call United as well, and possibly conference someone from LifeMiles in when it comes time to reissue the ticket.

Ben wrote about a similar situation here (though with different carriers): [URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2014/09/22/how-to-be-your-own-liaison/[/URL]

Thanks for the suggestions Brad and Tiffany. I’ll let you know how I make out.

After 2 calls to United and 6 to LifeMiles (including 4 hangups when they were connecting me to another department), I’ve learned (through a UA supervisor) that even though United cancelled the flight they have no responsibility to get me rebooked as the ticket is on LifeMiles stock using LifeMiles award currency. The first UA rep actually booked me on the nonstop Air New Zealand flight. Only problem was LifeMiles couldn’t ticket it as he rebooked me on a revenue ticket not an award ticket. I kept getting hung up on every time LifeMiles tried connecting me to their operations department, which is apparently the department that can help me. Anyway,their operations Dept is closed Sunday night so will try again tomorrow. From a previous FTU, I now realize you and Ben weren’t kidding when you said LifeMiles was frustratingly difficult to deal with if you can’t do it online.

It may help to read Avicana’s Contract of Carriage regarding schedule changes. I know I have used this in the past, and when you site certian sections about rebooking due to schedule changes they may be able to help you. Have you looked at your reservation on the UA website? If you are not having luck with LifeMiles and they won’t rebook you, just say you need to think about it and ask them to not modify your ticket, there is a slight chance it will just work itself out if UA rebooks everyone with reservations vs having everyone call in.

You are not the only one here having issues I was booked on those flights too with UA miles and one of the times I called I was told they only had economy seats available even though I booked business, I am going to wait another day to call back so they have one full business day to figure it out.