I'm booked on US metal for a flight tomorrow. If I were to choose to take a earlier flight on UAL metal will I have any issues.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by chudd:
I'm booked on US metal for a flight tomorrow. If I were to choose to take a earlier flight on UAL metal will I have any issues.</font>


I went from a UA flight/metal to a UA codeshare on US metal a few weeks ago, but it was a major, major headache.

I tried to change a UA ticket to US at ORD last week.....the GA told me that I needed to go to UA firstly, and get them to "release" my ticket. I didn't think that it was worth the trouble and just waited for my regular flight.

Even though US and UA are in a codeshare agreement, they are separate airlines. Once they merge (is it inevitable?), this won't be a problem.

I understand it may have been a headache, but you are saying that it IS possible, right? I'm thinking less about standby and more about irregular operations - jumping to the other airline if my original ticket has their flight number on it. For ex., UA metal with US flight numbers, ORD gets screwed up and all UA flights are a mess - could I walk over to the US counter and get a reroute on US metal? Could one call?
I've been curious for a while, but thankfully haven't gotten stuck and had to try to find out for myself! Any experiences?

If this is a voluntary change the airline that has the e-ticket has to release it to the other.

Also, take into account that US charges a standby fee for most of their fares. So if you switch to US operated from UA operated the agent may try to charge the fee.

In the reverse UA does not charge the standby fee, so once the ticket it released to UA by US you should be able to standby.