erik123

There is little you can do beforehand to resolve this (except for check seat availability from time to time to see what opens up.

It almost always will be resolved on board, as there are enough people who understand a small kid should not sit w/o a parent and will help.

Tango1

pmarrsouth, Just checked my original confirmation. It was flight 1040 on 2/15 and and flight 1039 on 2/21... was supposed to be a 757-300 each way. We were 18D, 18E and 18F going there and 18A, 18B and 18C on the return... or at least that's the seats we were sold.

spin88

I don't know how "far back" this was, but I had the identical situation happen pre-merger (2011) on SFO-HNL. MX, and we got dumped into scattered seats on the 772 Ghetto bird flight. But they did not simply leave it at that, GA talked to the purser, and gave her vouchers (I think they were $75 off a figure flight) to use to get us seats. We ended up with two sets of seats in E+, none were the middle seat. I then think UA gave us each $200 vouchers.

That type of service was why United got 99% of my flying, and why I recommended them to others. Alas, to the "savvy set" good service is too expensive, and what happened to you is acceptable. It is not.

LASUA1K

People are telling the OP they should've bought E+. The OP had assigned seats already, if E+ was available, then UA should've put the family in E+ FREE of charge.

As someone who travels with small children often, it's the worse feeling when you check your reservation every single day, then the night before, poooof, the seats you booked 6 months ago, are gone. Now you have to play the musical chair game, and the other passengers are making comments about, you should've booked seats ahead of time...

I've been in the situation, it is not fun.

Please, do not tell the OP, they should've purchased E+. At $70 x 2 or 3, is not that easy for a family on vacation.

mduell

Yes, this is completely standard for UA. UA told you this up front (rule 4 E), did it, and followed up in their standard manner.

UA really needs to improve their messaging here that you're making an advance seating request and that it is not assigned/confirmed/irrevocable. Leading carriers like Cathay make this pretty clear.

Despite UA's poor messaging, I have a dim view of these posts where it's so important they sit together on very expensive tickets, but they can't be bothered to pay for available seats together in E+.

The casual racism at the end of the first paragraph is really the cherry on top.

A bit of a different issue, since there was an actual equipment swap here to a smaller plane rather than a random scrambling.

Kacee

The IT bungling is that UA frequently fails to keep pax on the same PNR together when it swaps equipment.

Then of course there's the service recovery fail, where every single cs agent claims there's nothing they can do. So . . . the system can take seats away at whim, but the human beings charged with providing customer service can never give them back. It really makes no sense at all.

pmarrsouth

Thanks! From the way it was said and me not remembering a row 18, I thought that this may have been an exit row, which could have lead to similar issues.

Glad it got somewhat resolved for you, albeit maybe embarrassing and certainly frustrating trying to right this mess

eng3

I could understand if you were negligent in choosing seats in advance but in this case, you picked seats and UA caused you to get moved so UA should do everything they can to fix the issue. If there are open E+ seats, they SHOULD just give them to you for free. There's no policy ofcourse.

Did you check the seating map, were there actually 2 adjacent E+ seats? Often you're just left with middle seats or maybe exit rows and you and/or your kids can't go there either.

MSPeconomist

Why should people get Y+ seats for free just because they have small kids?

If arranging in advance to sit together is a sufficient priority, the Y+ seats together can be purchased. In this case, the OP decided that it wasn't worth the cost.

CO_Nonrev_elite

They DID have arranged seats together. UA screwed them up.

MSPeconomist

I don't think UA should or can give free Y+ seats to anyone who loses their preferred seat assignments due to an aircraft change. In some cases, there just wouldn't be enough empty Y+ seats on the plane.

Soccerdad1995

Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to fix this problem that is caused by United.

If you have 3 middle seats and assuming that you really only need two together (so kid can sit next to one parent), then you have 6 potential people who can help with an easy swap (all window and aisle seats can help with a complex swap). You just need one of those six people to be a little accommodating, and since you have 3 middles none of those six people are seated next to a traveling partner (but they could be across the aisle).

Unfortunately, in this case, you need to rely on the kindness of strangers. UA will not do anything to fix the problem they created.

And yes UA should definitely do better. Comping E+ would be a minimum in this situation, IMHO.

This same situation happened to me on pre-merger UA travelling with a toddler. Fortunately, I was able to find someone willing to swap seats. It might have helped when I explained to the people seated next to my daughter that she was likely to scream bloody murder the entire flight if she was not next to her mother. And this was a redeye flight.

Soccerdad1995

You are entitled to your opinion. And I do not agree with it.

In my opinion, UA should identify that the customer did everything they were supposed to do, and that UA's actions were the sole cause of this problem. UA could then take a moment to understand the exact problem that was caused by their actions and empower their employees to come up with an effective, low cost solution to that specific problem. In this case, re-seating at least 2 people in E+ would have been a great solution (assuming there were 2 E+ seats available).

If there were only middle E+ seats available, they could have announced that they would reseat anyone seated in an aisle or window E- to a middle E+ for free, which in turn makes a seat swap within E- much easier to arrange.

Wow, that's two simple low cost solutions right there. And I don't even work for an airline.

airzim

This was two years ago with a sCO crew, hence the 757-300. I did get 4 customer care kits, can't remember what it was, might have been 10% off for tickets plus free drinks etc.

The gate staff at SFO could not have been less helpful (typical for SFO in my experience) but the inflight crew were lovely. The FA actually helped negotiate the re-seating and I think gave the moved passengers drinks for free.

Having said all of this, I was given the option to fly First via LAX the following day or wait another day in SFO and also go First. We opted to just get there ASAP since we had an event in Wailea that evening.

I had choices, but they tried to make the best of a lousy situation, which is honestly, all you can ask for in situations like this.

artvandalay

^ Amazing, isn't it?