United and Avianca Award Booking Issues Appear to Be Fixed

June 27, 2019

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3 min read

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Over the last few months, we've written about issues that members have had redeeming Avianca and United miles on partner airlines. Today, there's excellent news, as reports filtering in are stating that these issues appear to be resolved.

For six months, United and Singapore have been struggling to resolve an "IT issue" that has prevented UA travelers from booking any sort of award redemption with Singapore Airlines via United's website. According to a previous statement made to Live and Let’s Fly, the issue was expected to be resolved by July 2019, so they're actually ahead of schedule — even though it's taken months to fix.

Long-haul flights in premium cabins on Singapore are typically not available using partner programs, and that remains the case. However, searches on United.com are now showing regional economy and business class awards on many routes, like these examples from Shanghai (PVG) to Singapore (SIN).

We're seeing decent availability in economy and much less in premium cabins, though that's true for just about any award booking.

If you're fortunate enough to find business-class award inventory on a United flight from the US to Asia connecting to a Singapore flight, it's just 75,000 miles for a chance to fly United's retrofitted 777-200 Polaris product, though you may be stuck flying in Singapore's older business class cabin with a 2-2-2 configuration instead of the 1-2-1 available on some of its newer planes.

It's also worth noting that a casual search produced no availability on any of Singapore's nonstop flights from the US — even in economy — though it's possible that a more thorough dig may turn up some awards.

Meanwhile, the Avianca LifeMiles' website, which had completely stopped showing award redemptions for both United and Air Canada, appears to have resolved whatever issue was plaguing it (this time). A quick search shows good availability for United:

And Air Canada:

We've written previously about LifeMiles flights pricing out at discounted rates, and that still appears to be live. This is especially good news as United makes the move to a fully-dynamic award chart.