lixiaojuventus

I have an award ticket issued by United that contains three segments: the first one is operated by Air China, while the other two are operated by Asiana. Now the first flight on Air China is delayed and I am afraid that I will miss the connection in PEK. However, Air China call center told me that they cannot modify tickets issued by United, while United told me that they do not see any other award seats available. What should I do? I think on the day of departure, Air China is ultimately responsible for flying me to the final destination, right?

Thanks!

sinoflyer

CA is responsible for your rebooking, once it is confirmed that you will misconnect.

I had a similar experience once. Outbound flight left 3+hours late, and I was informed of the automatic rebooking upon arrival in PEK.

lixiaojuventus

I see. The frustration is that there is another flight that can send me to PEK in time, but neither Air China nor United call center is willing to (or, in their language, is able to) move me to that flight. Is there any way to achieve this move at all?

findark

Doubtful - you're dealing with a pretty poor combination of support desks. In the event of IRROPS it is the responsibility of the late delivering carrier (CA) to get you to your final destination. UA doesn't want to get involved, understandably, and CA is deciding that it's not IRROPS yet.

jsloan

If there is no award space available on that flight, UA will not be able to put you on it. CA can put you on it but has chosen not to do so. If you can convince them that you'll miss your connection, they may put you on the earlier flight, but there's no guarantee.

rufflesinc

What are the flights?

lixiaojuventus

The flights are FOC-PEK-ICN-HNL. So if I miss my connection in PEK, will Air China put me on its PEK-HNL later in the day, despite that there is no award space on that flight either?

I agree with you. However, the frustration is that the CA call center is claiming that it cannot touch the ticket issued by United, which is quite annoying. Perhaps CA ticketing desk in PEK will be able to change it?

jsloan

If CA delivers you late to PEK, they are responsible to get you to HNL, and opening up space on their own flight is a perfectly sensible thing for them to do. If you ask them, they can put you on it even though there's no award space. (They may not want to, but they can).

CA is currently treating it as a pre-departure issue. Once they actually deliver you late to PEK -- or once you can convince them that they're going to deliver you late -- it becomes their responsibility.

I'm guessing you're on CA1822, showing as 7:35 departure scheduled in ExpertFlyer but 11:00 on CA's website (13:50 arrival). Then I'm assuming you're on OZ334 with a 15:20 departure. I was going to suggest that you try to get onto CA1808, 8:15 scheduled departure from FOC, but it appears to be full.

You'll likely do better with agents at FOC or PEK than you will with people on the phone, at least until an actual misconnect posts. As it stands, they may be thinking that you can hurry through PEK and get to your international departure.

(I also see MF8165, FOC-PEK, departing at 10:00, but it only has availability in first / business).

sinoflyer

Agreed, CA phone agents are likely to be not very helpful at this time, without confirmation of a misconnect. Ultimately, it's CA's responsibility to get you to HNL, not just ICN.

lax2010

There is no hope with CA (at FOC) because the CA agent will tell you that your connecting flight in PEK may also be delayed thus they won't do anything until you actually get to PEK!

NYC2TheWorld

What's the minimum connection time here? If the scheduled departure change has made your connection "illegal"; then call united and see if you can get a supervisor to work with UA's alliance liaison to see what they can do to get you to HNL.

If as of now your connection is still legal, then the above does not apply.

jsloan

MCT for D-I within terminal 3 at PEK is 2 hours. I would be stunned if UA's liaisons could get anything done at this point, given that the original departure time of the flight is less than one hour away and, as far as I can tell, CA hasn't published delay information beyond its own systems (there's nothing appearing in ExpertFlyer).

This is CA's issue and CA's responsibility to fix if a misconnect actually occurs. Dragging UA into it is unlikely to be productive. :-(

Hipplewm

You are confusing 2 things

United is out of it, short of CA telling you sorry you can't fly, United doesn't have a dog in this fight

Here is the gist of it:

CA is telling you they can't touch a United ticket, because at this point it is still a United ticket. Once you get on the plane, it then becomes CA problem. CA has to admit they will misconnect you, then they can say "We have a problem and fix it" most likely that won't be until you hit PEK.

NOW - once CA admits there is a problem, they don't need award space, just a seat and they should put you in that seat to get you to your destination

canadiancow

To be fair, that's quite reasonable.

I've certainly been in-flight, "knowing" I was going to misconnect (landing at my connection's departure time), only to be told by the GA to run because my connecting plane has a mechanical issue.

rufflesinc

It would be very sad if, OP having booked the earlier flight for longer cnx time, the later flight ends up arriving first.