United MileagePlus (Consolidated) - Plat is now Gold - 4 prebooked seats in E+ now down to 2 - what to do?

Last year, I booked 4 seats in E+ for an August trip with my family to MCO when I was still Plat. I was able to pre-reserve 4 E+ seats.

Now that I am only Gold, when I check my reservation, it says I am only entitled to me + 1 as far as free E+ seating, and that "payment" will be required for the 3rd and 4th seat. I assume they will try to collect on the day of travel, and I obviously don't want to pay if I can avoid it.

I am a 1MM'er, so my wife is also Gold.

So . . .

Am I correct to say that I should split the reservation so my wife and I each have one companion, since each of us should be able to reserve E+ for our self and a companion? Will we lose the seat assignments when I split the PNR? I assume this is easy to do online?

Thanks for the advice.

Last year, I booked 4 seats in E+ for an August trip with my family to MCO when I was still Plat. I was able to pre-reserve 4 E+ seats.

Now that I am only Gold, when I check my reservation, it says I am only entitled to me + 1 as far as free E+ seating, and that "payment" will be required for the 3rd and 4th seat. I assume they will try to collect on the day of travel, and I obviously don't want to pay if I can avoid it.

I am a 1MM'er, so my wife is also Gold.

So . . .

Am I correct to say that I should split the reservation so my wife and I each have one companion, since each of us should be able to reserve E+ for our self and a companion? Will we lose the seat assignments when I split the PNR? I assume this is easy to do online?

Thanks for the advice.

Splitting might be a good idea OR if you haven't lost the seats, the agent at the airport will see there's two golds + 2 companions and not charge you for seats. It depends if you want the hassle. You won't be able to check in online because you'll have to pay for seats.

Safe travels,
UG

It's not obvious that you're going to have to pay. I'm guessing you're in the same boat as us silvers who pre-reserved E+ seating for upcoming flights pre-3/3. In that case, as long as there isn't a plane or schedule change (and you don't try to change your seats), you're likely to be fine, since your seat assignments were w/in the rules when you actually selected them.

The E+ charge is generally triggered when you select the seats. Once you're in, you're likely good to go.

So, I wouldn't do anything, unless UA forces your hand.

Oops -- I missed the part where you mentioned that your wife is gold, so you're each entitled to 2 E+ seats. In that case, you should be fine. It's been a long-standing issue with united.com that it doesn't recognize cases where two travelers are entitled to E+ and so the party is entitled to more. I ran into this often traveling with my family, since I'm a premier and my wife has the (now-defunct) annual access.

At least pre-3/3, I would have to call and get a phone agent to assign seats w/o a charge (which sometimes took a while even then, since for some reason they had trouble comprehending the idea that we could be entitled to more than 2 seats; lots of patient explaining, waiting on hold, and polite hanging-up and re-calling). However, the check-in software was apparently smart enough to get that we were entitled to 4, and never had any issues, even when we changed our seat assignments at check-in time.

I've done it both ways (splitting itins, as well as one with 4). The downside to splitting is that in case of IRROPS, each PNR will be on its own for things like reaccomodation (less of an issue with your 1K/gold split than for our 2P/GM split). The upside to the split is that it does make it easier to manage your seat assignments.