Questions and Answers

Hey Ben,

Not sure if you already saw/knew this but it looks like Lufthansa will be bringing back DEN-MUC flights beginning May 11! Pretty cool!

Hello!

I’ve been enjoying your site for just a couple of months now and learned several tips I hope to put to use in the future (ie the stopover is something we’ve never utilized but looks to add great value).

Today is a question though. I am planning a 2-3 week graduation trip to Europe for my daughter and husband next May. In the past, when we’ve planned our European trips, the award flights were booked when the window for booking opened to assure us availability. This time, it was a recent decision to plan this trip so finding economy award seats to any European cities from DEN on United has been a challenge.

Yesterday, however, Lufthansa announced a non-stop flight between DEN and MUC starting 5/11/2016, which works wonderfully for our planning purposes. I thought perfect! New flight options! Jumped online last night, found numerous cities available via the new flight. When we settled on where and when, I went through the booking process up to and including clicking Purchase. Then an error popped up indicating a need to try later or call support. After attempting again this morning and having the same result, I called the 800 tech support number listed in the error message on the site and was told that there was not award availability yet released by Lufthansa to United on those flights. When asked why I could get as far in the booking process, the tech simply continued to apologize for the inconvenience.

I realize it’s a brand new flight and a partner flight at that. But if Lufthansa has not yet released award availability on the flights, why is it showing on United’s website as available for award travel? Anyway I can maybe talk them into booking the flight? What other strategy could I use to get this nailed down?

Thanks so much!
Devi

@Devi — It [I]might[/I] be phantom space. We were able to book some yesterday, but it’s entirely possible that some of that award availability is a false positive.

I’d recommend checking against Aeroplan and/or ANA to confirm what is actually there.
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/08/06/award-availability-discrepancies/[/URL]

[QUOTE=”Tiffany, post: 8728, member: 7″][USER=998]@Devi[/USER] — It [I]might[/I] be phantom space. We were able to book some yesterday, but it’s entirely possible that some of that award availability is a false positive.

I’d recommend checking against Aeroplan and/or ANA to confirm what is actually there.
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/08/06/award-availability-discrepancies/[/URL][/QUOTE]
Thanks Tiffany! While I’m certainly hoping it’s not phantom space, I’ll give the other suggestions mentioned in the post a shot.