Go to the airport after booking award travel and ask for a printed copy of the ticket. Call each and

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that I had a unique experience at Miami Airport last night. As I  wrote about last week , a blog reader generously gave me a 4 night stay at the Four Seasons Provence, so I used 50,000 United miles to book a one-way business class award on Swiss from Miami to Nice via Zurich. I ve had a lot of success using United miles on valuable Star Alliance awards, like my recent  Lufthansa first class experience.
However, last night I showed up at the airport 90 minutes early for my Miami to Zurich flight and the check-in agent (who was actually a Lufthansa agent) wasn t able to check me in. She didn t seem concerned because she said that  they have issues with every single United award ticket . I wasn t worried- clearly they ve had a lot of experience getting them fixed, so I figured it would all work out.
Tick tock. Time kept ticking and before long it was 35 minutes before departure and the entire check-in area was a ghost town with the manager talking to United ticketing in the back and trying to get a hold of a United rep in the airport.  In the end, I was told the only way for me to fly would be to purchase a ticket, and my business class seat was going for $6,100 one-way. The other option was to come back the next day and try to get it figured out.
I decided to purchase the ticket and then get United to reimburse, though I knew that would be taking a huge risk since United isn t exactly known for their proactive customer service. I planned to put it on my Sapphire Preferred environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc card, because thats the program I used to transfer the points to United in the first place and Chase has extraordinary customer service (plus I d get 2.14 points per dollar spent = 13,054 and then 7,500 flight miles for flying in paid business class, which would have been awesome if United or Chase did actually reimburse me in the end).  However, even when they tried purchasing a ticket the system wouldn t allow them due to departure environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc being so close, so they had to call central ticketing in Zurich to try and force it. At that point I actually Tweeted for help and thanks to instant responses from everyone, I realized that I could book British Airways flights using AA miles.
Since my trip was only 5 days, I didn t want to lose an entire day so I ended up calling environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc American AAdvantage and booking a last minute environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc first class award on British environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc Airways for 62,500 miles and $305. The award was booked and ticketed while walked to the British Airways terminal and they had no issues checking me in.
While I do not know the exact cause of the issue, I do know that United has had a lot of issues with award tickets since the merger. Earlier this summer I had a host of problems with a Hawaii award that would show booked online, but the miles would never be pulled and the ticket never issue. After multiple calls to the Premier desk, I was able to get it issued and flew without issues. I thought this ticket would be fine since I had a ticket number environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc and was able to pull the reservation up on Swiss.com, though for some reason environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc I wasn t able to check-in online, though thats not really an uncommon issue when using miles- especially on alliance partners.
Since tweeting about my experience a lot of others have reached out with similar stories and   Gary at View from the Wing has also recently written on this topic in an aptly named post When You Purchase a United Award Ticket, environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc That Doesn't Mean You Actually HAVE a Ticket .
I m clearly going to talk to United and get my miles back and hopefully a voucher of some sort for my troubles, but my main hope is that they fix their system environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc so no one has to go through that experience again. I m very lucky that I was traveling alone and I have a nice stockpile of AA miles, but most other people would have been SOL in the same situation.  If you have an upcoming United award on a partner, I d recommend showing up early just in case you run into a similar situation.
I just arrived to the Four Seasons Terre Blanche in Provence and I m exhausted, but I m going to contact United tomorrow to file my complaint and I ll be sure to update with the results. I m relatively new to United and I m a Premier Platinum thanks to a status match- is there a certain method of filing a complaint that works better than others?
This happened to me as well. I booked an award ticket through United that placed me on an Asiana flight from Seoul to Narita. environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc They said that there was some kind of problem in the coordination of the system that caused my Asiana flight ticket not to be issued and for my reservation to be auto-cancelled. In the end, Asiana ended up putting me on standby and only by sheer luck was I able to get a seat before environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc an upcoming typhoon that would have derailed a very important presentation. That was not nice at all.
What a mess!! I ve gotten some response from them via Twitter with a contact to follow-up with. Since you have miles on the line, I would start with a phone call to get the miles/taxes sorted out. For the most part though I just send them emails and eventually get a response (usually environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc within a month) that will include a voucher of some varying amount. For this big of a problem I would be more proactive. Good luck!
Man, I have a bunch of flights coming up on a United redemption I did a few weeks ago and this makes me pretty nervous. Would you recommend environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc I call United ahead of time to grab PNR numbers for the carrier airlines, or wouldn t this matter? It s probably worth doing this anyways just to reverse specific seats before check-in with the carriers.
When I arrived in PVG at 7pm, China Eastern informed me that, the 9pm flight was cancelled, there is a 10pm fight. However, since this was an award ticket, they can not bump me to 10pm. I would have to contact my ticketing agent or issuing carrier. I had to transfer to terminal 2 from terminal 1 as advised since China Eastern said Delta has a desk there, but once I arrive, there are no desk. I had to spent 40 yuan and an hour of China resolving the issue over with Delta booking me a 10pm flight environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc from FOC to PVG. I hustled my way back to terminal 1, trying to catch the flight. I was again informed that they could not locate the ticket nor passenger. I had to escalate the issue to the manager.
Day 6- I arrived the airport 7am for a 9am flight. I only to find out the agent could not issue my ticket, environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc they had to get a supervisor to call their support desk.. after 20-30 minutes, they were finally able to get us a boarding pass.
Go to the airport after booking award travel and ask for a printed copy of the ticket. Call each and every airline and confirm environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc the ticket. Setup accounts for each and every airline / loyalty program.
Recent booking environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc via US Airways miles. United changed flights and after some 6 hours of effort on the phone the issues remained. United insisted no issues existed with the ticket environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc but the other airlines insisted issues with the ticket and I would not be boarding the plane with the current status of the ticket. The other airlines and US Airways all confirmed the issue is with the lack of a reissue on the part of United. Finally went to the airport in person and the agent immediately reissued the ticket. Ironically 6 hours of effort environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc on the phone was addressed via 6 minutes of effort in person.
Hi and it s not just award tickets that the UA computers mess up. I paid for for 100% UA RT ORD- SIN in August, printed the confirmed reservation the day I made it, had 6 of 7 legs upgraded by the time I went to airport, could not check in on-line, environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc nor with the agent at the counter the computer said I was on ANA.
I used United miles to fly JFL-Tel environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc Aviv and back on Austrian Air, in May in bussines class no problem at all.. and since I stopped in Vienna for 3 days on the way back, I actually had 3 check in processes, in JFK, then Tel Aviv, and lastly in Vienna had great flights, especially environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc the food in Bussiness class in Austria Air is superb!
not to mention why didn t Swiss just put you on the flight? They had room in C since they were generously offering to sell you a $6000 one way ticket, they had your booking in their system, and you had a ticket environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc number. Until you sort it out, i might give Mileage Plus the benefit of the doubt.
I have found (and been told by UA reps) is to submit the complaint online so you get a ticket environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc number. Then call up the premier desk. This saves them the trouble of creating a ticket and gives you a record of the ticket number environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc (via email). My strategy is to submit on day 1, on day 2 call up and have them escalate as required. GOOD LUCK
Brian, E-mail jeff.smisek@united.com and CC the premier desk you have (I m a 1k so it s 1kvoice@united.com I think). Be very clear in the issue, and ask for a Gesture of Goodwill. If you lay out the argument succinctly, and make it somewhat obvious of what you d like (e.g. I d just ask for a gesture of goodwill, not say I want 30k miles or something), environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc you should be successful. Every time I ve had an issue, I ve been pleasantly surprised.
Checking into my Copa Airlines flight in Panama, they told me my award flight was confirmed, but not ticketed and there was nothing they could do. I could not fly home with my friend, who successfully booked the exact same award itinerary. I guess they felt bad, bc they eventually issued me a ticket. Not sure what they did, esp after they said they couldn t help!
Happened 4 weks ago. Wife s return leg from Asia with some Asiana partner legs was cancelled. Lucked environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc onto that information because I called United the night before she was going to leave to see if I could choose environmentally friendly car rentals vancouver bc seats for those flights. No notification whatsoever. It s a known issue, I was told. Super helpful, that. Appalling.
I spent *hours* trying to get her a different flight that night, but of course many of the connections and flights were now full. There was a reason I did it 4 months in advance. Nevertheless, United treated me like it was *my* problem to try to figure it out with partner a