Can’t Book Ethiopian Flights with United Miles
We want to alert you to a current problem: you can’t use your United miles to book Ethiopian Airlines flights right now. United’s website can’t even find the flights. A reader alerted us to this, so we decided to check into it. Thinking it could be just one route or a handful of days, we were surprised to find absolutely nothing. And United says it’s totally unsure why this is happening.
Sample Flights
When I search for domestic flights within Ethiopia, there’s absolutely nothing. 0 flights on this 30-day calendar.
What about international routes?
March 16, 2022 – ADD to ACC
United can’t find this direct flight.
Aeroplan finds the flight.
I can find the flight on LifeMiles.
April 11, 2022 – DXB to ADD
United can’t find this direct flight.
Aeroplan can find the flight.
LifeMiles can find the flight.
May 12, 2022 – GRU to ADD
United can’t find this direct flight.
Aeroplan can find this flight.
So can LifeMiles.
United’s Response
I reached out to United via chat and via Twitter. Here was their response:
We’ve checked and we are only offering the the Ethiopian flight in revenue. We are not offering it in award flight.
While we are unable to determine as to why award availability on Ethiopian operated flights are not offered on United booking channels at the moment, we’ll send a report to our Technology Team, so that they can look into it.
I asked if they could alert me to their findings about why users can’t book Ethiopian flights using United miles. Or can they at least let me know when it’s working again?
Regrettably, we do not have any means to notify/alert customers regarding this matter. What we can suggest best is to closely monitor the availability on the website or United app every now and then.
Final Thoughts
Thanks to our reader Ryan for bringing this to our attention in the comments on our weekly podcast. United says it doesn’t know why you can’t book Ethiopian flights with your United miles right now. I’ve booked tons of flights on Ethiopian Airlines in the past using United miles, so this is quite strange. Other partners can find these flights, so it’s unlikely there’s some “Ethiopian leaving the alliance” or anything weird. Most likely, it’s just United’s website having problems.
If anything changes, we’ll be sure to update you.
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Any update on this? Still showing no availability for revenue or points? Seems kinda strange that it would take Uniteds IT team over a month to figure this out?
I asked yesterday. They said they don’t know when it will be fixed.
Hi,
Do you think it has anything to do with some sort of payback against Ethiopian Airlines for the war that they do not approve of? I don’t think that they can just remove them from their network without some sort of reasoning. Right?
I’m going to assume it has no relevance.
Ok, it’s just odd that it’s been 3 weeks now that Ethiopian airlines reward flights have been completely unavailable on United. Hopefully it changes soon. Thanks for looking into this!!