Booking a flight using reward miles

Your timing is impeccable. United just started offering reward booking for one way flights.

I've done this with another airline and there is no problem. It doesn't cost any more miles but you may have to pay a little more in fees.

Not sure that is completely true. Last Fall we flew United via Chicago to Amsterdam and return from Rome via Frankfurt on Lufthansa. All on FF miles.

I have had no problem doing open jaw all the time, however, maybe it is your level that's the problem. I use mainly CO, used to do DL but parted during the bankruptcy fiasco.

Thanks for your replies. Open jaw reward flights with United in the past have had to be done over the phone and the fee is more, I believe, than the on-line fee. I appreciate the information.

There are many ways to get around the obstacles that United (and most other airlines) place in your way. You just need to be persistent, resourceful, and patient, and you can get a lot more than they would lead you to believe.

Two years ago I was trying to put together a trip to Southeast Asia using United miles. When I tried using the conventional tools available, there was no way to make it work. But by researching how the game is played (and by being persistent, resourceful, and patient), I was able to get 2 seats for the trip, and although the outbound trip was hellishly long, it worked fantastically. We flew from Seattle to San Francisco to Hong Kong to Singapore to Bali - that route was all on Singapore Airlines (wonderful service!) except for the first short leg from Seattle to San Francisco. The return leg had us on Thai Airways from Bali to Bangkok - where we had a three week "stopover", then finally retuned on United metal from Bangkok to Tokyo to Seattle. This as all done one one ticket (per person), for the basic cost of one round trip from North America to SE Asia.

Of course, when I first called United and asked about simply flying from Seattle to Bangkok, or from Seattle to Bali, they said sorry, nothing is available. I went off, did my homework, and called back with the complete routing, with each flight number and quoted them the details of their F program that allowed stopovers, and had the agent check again. They said no. I called back and spoke to a different agent, and asked them not to check the whole trip, but just to check each leg (which I had confirmed were available using a different system). The agent checked each leg and admitted each was available, they put the trip together and it worked. It was a heckuva trip.

Lessons learned: the agents are often lazy, disinterested and uninformed. You have to do the work and spoon-feed them. And don't take the first "no" for an answer.

Good luck!

Grier,

If the two "one-way" flights that you want are available online with United, I would book it that way. The one-way option is new (although I wish that they had "add to cart" type of feature so you could build your itinerary and buy once). I think that it is great since it can be a pain to go through the agents. Some are helpful, some not so much. Now if they would only add the partner flights ...

We booked our open jaw tickets using Continental FF miles online. Even though we booked through Continental, we will actually be flying on United and Air Canada. Since we were using miles I had to book my flight and my husband's flight separately. They assigned seats for me, but not for my husband. When I tried to make seat assignments for him it wouldn't let me do it. I hope we don't end up not being able to sit together!