Questions and Answers

Hello everyone here, I am new to the forum and but have been following lucky since 2014. I would say I have very decent knowledge in all the award redemption, and had redeemed numerous awards.

However recently I am trying to do a “exotic” route that flies from US to Asian through Africa.
As a lot of you might have read the new non stop service from LAX to Lome, Togo, I would like to utilized that flight in my itinerary.

The route runs as follow:
[IMG]https://ibb.co/jmpbPf[/IMG]

So basically LAX-LFW-ADD-HKG-TPE. You might wonder why I would wanna fly eastbound. Well I am an aviation geek and I found this route to be super interesting. =P

I search every segments through United.com and all of them have savers award space, which is fantastic. In order to book this Star Alliance award, from my understanding, possible option will be booking through United Airline or Avianca Lifemiles. Lets kook at them in 2 cases:

1. Booking through United
According to the routing rule of UA, There are three cases that an award cannot route through a third region.
[LIST]
[*]Travel from North America to Oceania may not occur via Europe, the Middle East, or Africa.
[*]Travel from North America to Australia may not occur via Europe or Africa.
[*]Travel from North America to anywhere may not occur via South America
[/LIST]
Well, it seems like North America to Asia via Africa is no restricted. In fact NA to Asia is often route through Europe on United.com.

A lot of us may remember that we used to be able to customize our routing on United.com through Multi-city search. But they have since remove that function. Even when I am able to get my segments together with multi-city search. The system would price them individually, instead of the North America -North Asia Price.

I called United number, and I was told that they have the same system and this route would price as 80,000 + 100,000 in business. Which are the total of US to Africa + Africa to Asia.

Question here: Is there anyway to make United price this itinerary as US to Asia for 80,000 in biz?
Is this possible that another agent/supervisor can price it right with old system or override?

2. Booking with Lifemiles
I am a big fan of Lifemiles. I have purchase and used about million miles in the past 4 years. I understand the glitch and the frustration of call center. (I have also probably spent 100 hours with their call center.) However they usually have the best price if I am able to get it right.

One example was I flew HKG-BKK-FRA-ORD in F for only 90,000 LM. I first found HKG-BKK-FRA in TG F for 115,000 LM and then find FRA to ORD in LH F for 87,000. I emailed their customer support and asked them to combine the itinerary, and Boom! I got my dream trip for only 90,000 LM.

This time I tried to do it the same way. I searched LAX-DD, and ADD-TPE. Well ADD-TPE showed up on lifemiles.com but not LAX-ADD. So I searched every segments individually, and the system wouldn’t show LAX to LFW. I could get it to price LFW-ADD-HKG-TPE though:

[IMG]https://ibb.co/fZq5H0[/IMG]

I don’t think ET would block the award space from LAX-LFW intentionally, like how they blocked LH F. especially that LAX-LFW is wild open through out the schedule on United website. Maybe lifemiles needs run an update since it is a new route? I have yet to call them since I know their agent usually know nothing….

Anyone has any ideas or suggestion that I could make this work, either United or Lifemiles, or maybe something else?

Thank you very much!

I’ve only ever seen East Coast US-Asia via Europe on UA, never from the west coast.

I dont have a way to look up MPM between two cities, but that could be a reason why it wont be bookable as a single award.

Based on the method used in [URL=’https://dcta.boardingarea.com/2017/11/aeroplan-mpm-trick/’]this [/URL]post, LAX-TPE MPM by Aeroplan is 10228. Any routing LAX-TPE exceeding this is not allowed by Aeroplan (UA’s MPM values may be different). Your routing greatly exceeds this value, so it’s not bookable.