US Dividend Miles - Award Booking Questions and General Discussion

[travelislife]

Hey all, hoping someone here knows how to deal with an issue that's popped up for me.

I made my booking earlier this month and now checking it on the US Airways site it says there's an issue. "Your reservation containing flight number 174 departing from Sydney, Australia on March 24, 2014 has been changed." This is Air China 174 specifically, and a quick Google suggests that the flight now departs at 8PM instead of 9PM as it states on the booking. Is this an issue? The reservation page also says to "Please contact us as soon as possible to book new flights. Call us at 800-428-4322" but I'm not sure if this is really necessary and I'm concerned it could lead to a fee for changing my booking. What should I do? Just call up tonight and see what they say?

It should be a simple case of calling up and accepting the changes if you are happy with them, unless you want to actually change the flights where often this can be used as 'a get out of jail free card' with regard to the waiving of fees.

Unfortunately this seems to happen a lot with daylight savings. I know that Thai for instance are useless at having the correct times in the forward timetable even though daylight savings dates are known well in advance. So if you have booked their flights before they have updated the timetable all your flights have changed by an hour on departure time. Have had some close run ins with this before.

 

[MaxLaughton]

It should be a simple case of calling up and accepting the changes if you are happy with them, unless you want to actually change the flights where often this can be used as 'a get out of jail free card' with regard to the waiving of fees.

Unfortunately this seems to happen a lot with daylight savings. I know that Thai for instance are useless at having the correct times in the forward timetable even though daylight savings dates are known well in advance. So if you have booked their flights before they have updated the timetable all your flights have changed by an hour on departure time. Have had some close run ins with this before.

Ah, DST makes total sense as the reasoning. Thanks.

 

[Alanslegal]

I think only 3E/3F. 2E (or 2F, whatever it is called) stands alone in the middle. Add that to 1A/1K, 2A/2K and 3A/3K, that makes a cabin of 9 seats (for the new B747 layout).

Happy to be proven wrong, but I think I remember the new B747s only have one connected pair.

We recently flew in the 10F config in seats 2E & 2F and they are sat together as are 3E & 3F. Agree that in the 9F config row 3 is the only option if you want to sit together.

3E/3F are the only pairing seats on the refurbished 747s however due to the suite/box wall design, the seats felt much narrower than those adjacent to the window. As the food cart comes out from the galley behind 3F, 3F was always served first for each meal course. The cart would then work its way up that aisle serving 2K, 1K, then 1A, 2A, 2E?,3A then 3E.

With respect to the Royal Spa ...... as its an hour massage, is there any possibility of extending that to two hours? I find one hour massages as a bit too short, happy to pay for it etc.

 

[auriga]

glad it worked out! when you have the time please tell us the details of the booking problems. might be useful data points.

I would have sprung for first on one leg. the buggy pick up on arrival, vastly better seating (getting a good sleep on that flight is good if followed by an asian connection) and much better lounge in bangkok is worthwhile.

I am not sure that I agree. You are looking at an extra 30000 miles, so say around $600 extra per person. For just the one flight, feels like a bit much (to me).

 

[wittont]

glad it worked out! when you have the time please tell us the details of the booking problems. might be useful data points.

I would have sprung for first on one leg. the buggy pick up on arrival, vastly better seating (getting a good sleep on that flight is good if followed by an asian connection) and much better lounge in bangkok is worthwhile.

Yeah, I'll have another look at it when the next round of bonus miles comes up and that way I'll only have to pay for half the upgrade points

The biggest issue around the booking other than, waiting on hold for ages and ages as agents when off in seach of answers (disconection) then having to start all over again, was that once I got to the paying part, it was discovered that one of the previous agents had booked the entire trip on one mileage account. This would of been fine if I had enough milage in that account, but I only had enough mileage for each ticket in each of our accounts. I was then told that they would have to cancel this booking, thereby placing the seats back into the system and that there was no gurantee that I would get the same 2 tickets again !!! Clearly not that happy about this outcome as I had (a number of times) given BOTH mileage account numbers to the agent. The solution I was told was that I needed to "share" my miles into my mothers account and then they could process the booking. When I went back onto the website and investigated "sharing" if looked like I'd have to pay about $1,000 to "share" 110,000 miles !!!! So yet another phone call to US Air to once again explain the situation and that I would NOT be "sharing" the miles between accounts, fully expecting to be put on hold again, however to my relief this agent was surprised this was even suggested and said she could split the tickets without putting them back on the "market" - 40 mins later job finally done !

Looking back it's added to my US Air education, but it was very frusrating at times.

 

[travelislife]

Yeah, I'll have another look at it when the next round of bonus miles comes up and that way I'll only have to pay for half the upgrade points

The biggest issue around the booking other than, waiting on hold for ages and ages as agents when off in seach of answers (disconection) then having to start all over again, was that once I got to the paying part, it was discovered that one of the previous agents had booked the entire trip on one mileage account. This would of been fine if I had enough milage in that account, but I only had enough mileage for each ticket in each of our accounts. I was then told that they would have to cancel this booking, thereby placing the seats back into the system and that there was no gurantee that I would get the same 2 tickets again !!! Clearly not that happy about this outcome as I had (a number of times) given BOTH mileage account numbers to the agent. The solution I was told was that I needed to "share" my miles into my mothers account and then they could process the booking. When I went back onto the website and investigated "sharing" if looked like I'd have to pay about $1,000 to "share" 110,000 miles !!!! So yet another phone call to US Air to once again explain the situation and that I would NOT be "sharing" the miles between accounts, fully expecting to be put on hold again, however to my relief this agent was surprised this was even suggested and said she could split the tickets without putting them back on the "market" - 40 mins later job finally done !

Looking back it's added to my US Air education, but it was very frusrating at times.

This just proves why the need to HUACA and why being educated (by reading these forums, etc.) before trying to book makes life so much easier. You got lucky, as that first agent is totally incorrect and as you found out it is very easy to just split the PNR's for the bookings.

I pity the person who calls up and says 'Can you find me flights for 2 people in Business class from Australia to America?'. They pretty much have no hope.

 

[smit0847]

I pity the person who calls up and says 'Can you find me flights for 2 people in Business class from Australia to America?'. They pretty much have no hope.

'Im not seeing anything sir'

 

[hummel]

The other week I got..

'Sir, USAirways doesn't fly from Australia to Guam. Have you thought about Hawaii?'

 

[smit0847]

The other week I got..

'Sir, USAirways doesn't fly from Australia to Guam. Have you thought about Hawaii?'

'Sir, there is absolutely no way to get from Australia to Guam'

(five minutes later)

'How did you know there was availability on all these flights?'

 

[wittont]

This just proves why the need to HUACA and why being educated (by reading these forums, etc.) before trying to book makes life so much easier. You got lucky, as that first agent is totally incorrect and as you found out it is very easy to just split the PNR's for the bookings.

I pity the person who calls up and says 'Can you find me flights for 2 people in Business class from Australia to America?'. They pretty much have no hope.

I agree, the first time you do anything is alway difficult - still leaning and reading, hopefully I'll get better and quicker.

 

[LordGarlic]

The other week I got..

'Sir, USAirways doesn't fly from Australia to Guam. Have you thought about Hawaii?'

On a serious note, is there a way to fly to guam for 30K miles as I think it is still within south pacific.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

On a serious note, is there a way to fly to guam for 30K miles as I think it is still within south pacific.

yes. several people have done it. including via NRT.

 

[LordGarlic]

what would the routing be if I am in Adl?

 

[travelislife]

what would the routing be if I am in Adl?

Something like ADL-SIN-NRT/KIX/HND/cough-GUM

 

[bcworld]

So for all those who are hoarding USDM in anticipation of transferring to AA here's some bad news!

American to impose fuel surcharges for all international AAdvantage awards(!!!) - One Mile at a Time - One Mile at a Time

And for those who suffer from extreme angst re Avianca changes this appears to be effective immediately with no notice...so add AA to your blacklist!

 

[Flashback]

So for all those who are hoarding USDM in anticipation of transferring to AA here's some bad news!

American to impose fuel surcharges for all international AAdvantage awards(!!!) - One Mile at a Time - One Mile at a Time

And for those who suffer from extreme angst re Avianca changes this appears to be effective immediately with no notice...so add AA to your blacklist!

Not cool at all.

 

[smit0847]

So for all those who are hoarding USDM in anticipation of transferring to AA here's some bad news!

American to impose fuel surcharges for all international AAdvantage awards(!!!) - One Mile at a Time - One Mile at a Time

And for those who suffer from extreme angst re Avianca changes this appears to be effective immediately with no notice...so add AA to your blacklist!

I wouldnt be the least bit surprised if USDM follow suit. If you have a trip in the works, I would book it ASAP!

 

[hummel]

Not great news for sure

What kind of increase in $$ would we be looking at? Surely were still on a good deal??

 

[burmans]

I wouldnt be the least bit surprised if USDM follow suit. If you have a trip in the works, I would book it ASAP!

While I certainly wouldnt be surprised if US management wanted to do this, I'm of the view they would have been waiting for the move to AA to actually achieve it. The main reason they have never allowed *A online is that their IT is widely regarded as the worst of the US airlines (and that is one very, very low bar given known IT stuff ups by the others). The indications are that this would be a pretty serious IT change to achieve and they just havent been interested when they have a way out of moving to a new system and that would be their corporate priority(and will probably remain so until the merger is resolved one way or another).

So certainly not ruling it out but dont think this will happen in that much of a hurry.

 

[deejo77]

I think I might stop hording my USDM at 333k...........and I think we might do a family trip to GUM (hopefully with a stop over in Osaka)...........oh well back to the 750K QFF points at least I know they are going to screw me with the charges