Boraxo

I would be mega-angry if this happened to me and I understand your frustration. It is pathetic that UA's own manifest is not correct, and I wonder if that complies with FAA/DOT regulations. Maybe worth a quick letter to the government with a copy to UA.

That being said, 2 wrongs don't make a right, and it doesn't make sense to kick another passenger from an assigned seat (who may have equal status) in order to fix the mistake. While this occasionally happens in F (with sometimes bad effects) it would wreak havoc in Y as GAs and FAs would be forced to deal with the fallout while under the gun to get the plane out.

In this case you clearly found the best solution for a 1K which is to politely raise the issue with the GA and see if they can find you an acceptable seat. I've done this when I lost a pre-assigned seat due to an equipment change, and I find that most GAs are very accommodating to 1Ks particularly when the requests are reasonable. There are almost always last minute cancellations, etc. and hence the overbooking.

I understand time is money, but you can't be serious to expect UA to compensate you for lost time. Most 1Ks fly enough to have lost hundreds of hours to mx and wx delays, problem solving, etc. - that's just the way life is.

eng3

Yes, I'm just calling out the issue. I recall reading someone who had this issue in the past where UA would not accept the BP as proof he took the flight so he had no way to prove it.

747FC

Followup: An EF Seat Alert came through again, and I got one of her aisle seats reinstated after someone canceled (or UA did it for them). One down, one to go...

Thanks for all previous responses. Sorry to hear that this is not an isolated occurrence. Also, nice to hear that people are so casual about their seating choices, that they are not bothered by having their choices disappear...

Mary2e

Oh, I was bothered... and I raised all heck with customer service, supervisors, etc. We had picked the seats months in advance, were in Y in the 2 seats together, and of course, all of those had been taken after he was cancelled out.

I don't know how or what they did, but they got me 2 seats together. I did not want to spend 9 hours on an overnight flight when I was planning on sleeping, next to a stranger.

Boraxo

You must not travel much by yourself. I sleep next to strangers on just about every TATL and TPAC flight I've taken, with the rare exception of a handful family vacations. Of course it's not quite as intimate in business class...

azzurro

This happened to me but my boarding pass was the UA app. No paper. I landed at connection point and was not on the upgrade list any more so I inquired at the podium only to find I was not on the flight at all, even though I was as of that morning. They never could explain what happened, best guess is that the beep when I scanned onto the first leg did not go through but no error message was generated. Not sure how that worked with the final passenger count, or if I did scan properly but UA computer somehow later misread it an cancelled the rest of the itinerary? Luckily they got me the last standby seat, and it was E+.

Often1

+1 - People grossly overstate the value of bogus DOT complaints. When a passenger files a complaint, it is referred to the carrier for a response. Those responses are dealt with by junior regulatory paralegals working from templates.

In this one, it's, that UA fully complied with Rule XX.X of the COC along with a link. DOT will respond to the complainant with a copy of the UA response and that's the end of it unless there is something more factually. Here, there isn't.

All this does is feed the notion that most consumer complaints are frivolous, making it harder to find those which deserve some attention. In addition, all those regulatory specialists at DOT are paid with taxpayer dollars. That's me.

grbauctions

Oh come on a little overly dramatic here. This kind of thing happens. She still kept here F seat luckily, Should you get some compensation yes. 20k I'd guess.

grbauctions

^

matrixwalker2012

As big an airline as UA is, you would think that corporate knows that mistakes slip by from time to time and will have issued agents some guidance in dealing with it.

Just using some common sense, if a pax scheduled on SFO-EWR-EDI somehow shows up in EWR inside the airport a bit after the time the EWR flight arrived, and the system did show they were in SFO that day (checked in at the airport, etc), then that pax probably most likely was on the flight. It's not likely the lax would've skipped their scheduled flight and then flew by private jet to EWR...

ws8n

Do u condone that as pax, we should just sit down quietly and let airlines change /cancel our reservations at their whim and fancies? What if the pax didn't notice the cancellation and tried to checkin for flight, only to find out the flight is now full?

If airlines can charge $$$ for change fees, maybe it's time for us to charge them for such unilateral cancellations!

I didn't know they is a campaign to get UA DOT complaints up, but I ain't surprised given the recent spate of negative publicity.

747FC

Further followup: UA offered 10k, which while it does not translate to my hourly rate, I am satisfied with the gesture. They screwed up, caused disruption in our lives (if only for an hour), so a bit of "Sorry" and 10k is appropriate.

Not sure what is so dramatic...expecting a service that one pays for to be delivered. (do you work for a company that does not care whether their customers' orders are accurately processed?) Oh, don't tell me that seats are not guaranteed (IRROPs I understand, Information Processing failures I don't.) My poor wife would have been SOL and probably in economy minus on a 12-hour journey had she not had me obsessively bird-dogging her travels.

worldwidedreamer

If you want to do something, I encourage you to write to your congressperson. At some point we will have legislation passed that gives pax more protections in what will always be an asymmetric relationship. Would not invest much time providing details (letters just get scanned and filed), but every touch point does move the needle a tiny bit.

Miles Ahead

People have common sense. Computers don't. The exact same situation you describe happened to me: I was flying PSC-DEN-ORD on the return, and there was an internet outage in Pasco. (Big fun - I have a handwritten paper receipt saying I returned the rental car) Sure enough, by Denver my ticket to Chicago had been cancelled.

It took an agent all of 5 minutes to fix it, but it took an agent.

Mary2e

Not any longer. It's not that I didn't want to, it's that it's more comfortable next to someone you know because you don't have to worry about falling on or disturbing your seat mate. And I booked early enough to make sure I could secure those seats.

I've been traveling F to HNL for the last 4 or 5 years, so it's really not an issue any longer. I don't care who I'm next to