United invents time travel, jumps forward 3 days

UPDATE 2 (12:00pm EDT 13 Sept): Bookings are available again. Git ‘er done quick; the partnership ends tomorrow.

It is relatively old news that the partnership between United Airlines and Qatar Airways is ending. We’re in the final few days, in fact, as United previously announced September 14th as the final day for earning or redeeming points with Qatar. And when the company killed access to the award inventory via the phone agents well before the deadline I didn’t raise much of a fuss, mostly because the website was still working great for me.

Apparently United has decided that September 14th has come and gone, even though my calendar still shows the 12th. The partner award inventory which was showing so readily just hours ago is now gone from the website, too. I’ll try phoning in to see if an agent can check the seats but I’m not holding my breath.

Terminating the partnership was unfortunate enough for customers (though not all that surprising). Not bothering to even stick to the previously announced dates, however, is absolutely horrid.

UPDATE (5:30pm EDT 12 Sept): I’ve opened lines of communication with United and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it. Will let everyone know when I have more information to share.

United Airlines and Qatar Airways terminate partnership

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by Seth Miller 1 year ago1 year ago

11 Comments

another change we will like?

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It was there this morning and around noon it went away. Very frustrating.

The 14th is the end of the US work week. However the end of Qatar’s work week is Thursday. It’s Wednesday here and Thursday there, so I’m guessing it’s more likely that QR pulled the inventory because when they came back to work, it’d be after the 14th.

They were already having probably this past weekend when they updated their systems.

Any response from United?

Seth says:

12 September 2012 at 3:34 pm

I’ve opened lines of communication with United and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it. Will let everyone know when I have more information to share.