United Airlines seems to be back to its old dirty tricks that it mastered in the early 2000’s during both bankruptcies – blocking award space on partners.
Awards on Thai Airways, Singapore Airlines and TAP have now been unavailable for weeks (read more here). ANA was just added to this ever-increasing list of non-award airlines yesterday.
You can access United Airlines here.
Award on these airlines are still available using other Star Alliance frequent flier programs (just testing their websites). It is only United’s unwillingness or inability to pay for award tickets on these airlines that makes them to deny MileagePlus members’ availability to redeem on them due to IT “issues” (read cash).
Conclusion
Seems that the old United has made a comeback. It was fun to see how they randomly block award space on certain weekdays. Now, they have blocked entire airlines (four at the moment), of which three are in Asia.
This just erodes the trust that members have in United and their frequent flier program MileagePlus.
