4/18 Update: FIXED! Finally, United has fixed this and Asiana awards, including Asiana First Class Suites, are once again bookable on United.com. We'll see how long the fix lasts….
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United StarNet blocking refers to United blocking awards of Star Alliance partners. Nicholas Kralev, in a 2008 Washington Times article, quoted Jeff Kovick, a United spokesman as saying (bolding mine):
“We manage award availability on our Star Alliance partners just as we do with United’s own saver awards…It is an ongoing balance of ensuring we meet our customers’ interest in award travel on partner carriers with United’s need to generate revenue on our own flights.”
Well, whether it's StarNet blocking or simply an IT bug (and UA Insider on Flyertalk claims it is the latter, saying “this is a temporary technical issue. We're working with our partners at Star and Asiana to resolve, and are looking to have the availability back on united.com as soon as possible.”), it now seems to be impossible to book Asiana First Class awards on United.com, even at the sky high mileage levels now in effect, after the United Award Chart Devaluation. The devaluation increased an Asiana first class roundtrip award 71%, from 140,000 MileagePlus miles to 240,000 MileagePlus miles.
ANA displays actual StarNet award availability, so let's first take a look at New York JFK to Seoul ICN on OZ221 in First Class for some dates in late February. I actually did my search for 2 people, and over this example 7 day period, there is first class award availability for two on 2/18, 2/19, 2/20, 2/23 and 2/24:
Now take a look at United.com–NONE of these dates showed Asiana award availability for even 1 person, in any class. This is 2/18, but none of the dates that the ANA Tool shows Asiana First Class award availability for display any Asiana award space, on United.com:
I haven't had time to do an exhaustive check of all Asiana routes, but I've spot checked a few, and not found award availability being displayed on United.com. I called United, using the handy United Callback function, and the agent I spoke with was able to see availability in her system (agents use a different system) so Asiana awards ARE still bookable–but conveniently (for United's Revenue Department) none of that award availability seems to be displayed online. And even if it is a technical issue, as United is asserting, Asiana award space has been missing from United.com for over a week, so it doesn't seem a high priority for United to resolve.
Have you had to call United to book an Asiana award due to not finding award space on United.com?
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