Questions and Answers

Lucky, I have noticed over the past few months that United has become worthless for business class awards on their own flights. Not so bad availability on partners, but United themselves…next to nothing.

I am finding this for awards and for global upgrades. I’ve found less than 10 global upgrade flights from anywhere in Europe to anywhere in US for this October. Awards, just as stingy. It is so horrible that I even called the 1K desk to make sure there wasn’t something wrong. I had also been trying in January to book for this June and gave up as there was nothing. We are talking 1 ticket even!

Having given myself up to United for the past 10 years (misery of living in one of their hub cities), I really need to let go as you have been able to do recently with AA.

Has anyone else been experiencing nothing on the awards front for United, even for 1k elites with supposed extra inventory? It is awful, at least internationally in business class.

Welcome [USER=4403]@MikeGCdn[/USER] – while not everyone can book so far in advance it’s possible that the award availability is just already gone. Though I’m not using UA miles, I’m going to Europe in October and booked my tickets last November. Are you able to see availability at the end of the schedule?

I can only speak for AA award space (on AA metal) in J for October. Back in March there was award space, in April almost gone, and on Friday I got the last seat on the last saver award out of Venice for October 23rd. I believe you may be late and the award space is now gone. I’m finding that AA doesn’t generally open space 11 months out but rather you start to see it at 8 months give or take a month.

In January, I easily booked an award flight (to France in J) for May with AA. However, it’s gotten harder in the past two years and I don’t hold out hope that it will improve anytime soon so I dumped a lot of miles booking award flights this year.

UA seems worse than AA or DL in this area. I wouldn’t hesitate to make a switch. I left DL in 2010 and haven’t looked back. And I might leave AA someday and go back to DL – these award programs change like the wind and what works one year, may stink the next. Good luck!