United MileagePlus (Consolidated) - Award Ticket Irrops - what is UA's responsibility to get me to my destination?

This was a question I posed on the other forum, and got two very different responses from Seth and Ben and I'm starting to get concert about my itinerary...so your experiences and thoughts are very much welcomed...

If a flight is delayed due to a delayed inbound UA aircraft and a misconnect will occur on an award ticket, what is UA's responsibility to get me to my destination? Does it matter if the inbound aircraft delay is mx or wx? If there is no award inventory on the *A partner's next flight will UA tell me me to pound sand until award space opens up or will they access revenue buckets? Specifically, the reason I'm asking is on the SQ award tickets, there obviously won't be award space on SQ so I wanted to find out whether UA will indeed accommodate me on the next SQ flight or another SQ flight over a different routing.

FWIW, from Seth "At any point once travel has commenced award tickets are to be considered by all *A partners as regular revenue tickets. Whether they play by the rules or not is another question, but that's how they should be treated."

From Ben "You should be VERY concerned if you misconnect on an award ticket. At best you’ll be booked on the carrier that the ticket was booked with and at worst you’ll be rebooked in coach on a partner airline or on an airline that has saver first/business class award space."

If you already posed the question and got some answers - albeit conflicting ones - in another thread/forum, why are you starting a fresh thread here? :confused:

New thread b/c it's a different site. I love them over there dearly, but there is a level of experience here at FT that is unmatched on the interwebs.:D Plus, for a once-in-several-years mistake like the SQ one, the more input to make sure I'm not screwed, the better.

My understanding is the carrier responsible for your misconnect is the one responsible to rebook you to your destination.

If a flight is delayed due to a delayed inbound UA aircraft and a misconnect will occur on an award ticket, what is UA's responsibility to get me to my destination?

Have you read UA's Contract of Carriage? If not, why not?

It's the responsibility of the inbound carrier (ie, the one that led to the misconnect) that's responsible. Will that carrier reprotect you on the next avail flight in the same cabin (1) using avail award inventory, (2) using ANY availability but keeping within the same alliance/partnership, or (3) using ANY availability?

It's my understanding that UA/CO internal policies are to try to find something using the order of priorities noted above. Having said that, however, some agents don't know or are unwilling to do anything other than just try to find more award space, even if that's a week from now!

The policy is, as I've been told by "the right people in UA res", that barring the ability to use (1) or (2), above, then they will reprotect on another carrier, assuming that carrier has interline agreements with UA.

Assuming the misconnect is because of UA's IRROPs, UA would probably prefer to rebook you on UA instead of SQ; I would be concerned about not getting SQ flights.

As long as there are open seats (not just open reward seats) and/or you can stand to wait a day, I wouldn't worry about being stuck in coach.

It's the responsibility of the inbound carrier (ie, the one that led to the misconnect) that's responsible. Will that carrier reprotect you on the next avail flight in the same cabin (1) using avail award inventory, (2) using ANY availability but keeping within the same alliance/partnership, or (3) using ANY availability?

It's my understanding that UA/CO internal policies are to try to find something using the order of priorities noted above.

AFAIK that's generally *A policy and what UA has done for me.

My limited experience with IRROPs on award tickets was due to a medical diversion on an LH fight (UA ticket). LH rebooked me on LH first (instead of UA first) and put me in a revenue F bucket on my connecting domestic UA flight.

Have you read UA's Contract of Carriage? If not, why not?

Because it's 46 single-spaced pages of boring text. :D