Originally Posted by
UALBoston
Okay everyone, here's the deal...
30 min prior to departure, the gate agent at your flight hits two key strokes, the first one "gates" the flight preventing the ECU's, united.com, and the counter agents from checking anyone in. The second releases all the seats that passengers haven't checked into yet. At this point all upgrades and standbys are cleared and you start boarding...The system doesn't bother to check the status of each un-checked in passenger, it just knows that you haven't checked in yet, and you're exit aisle or first class seat are now ours to do what we please with.
Fair enough, and definitely makes sense in the context of the OP not being checked in for the flight....if the OP had indeed checked in, I am sure his seat would have been safe until the doors were ready to close.
But one question I have is whether gate agents can decide to close the flight more than 30 minutes prior to departure. For example, once I was blocked from using ECU at DFW and it was at least 35 minutes prior to departure and was told that the gate agent had closed my flight early due to irrops impacting earlier flights. Does this happen often?
Another issue where I'd be curious to hear your two cents is the circumstances when a GA will offload a non-rev who has been cleared on the flight. In the OP's case, provided doors weren't ready to close, would it have been appropriate for a non-rev to be removed?
Oh btw, welcome to FT. ;-)