I was scheduled to depart from DCA to ORD and the flight was weather delayed so when I arrived at ORD, it wasn't in time to make my connecting flight to SFO. I called the 1K desk and was told to go to gate C19 since there was a flt scheduled to go from ORD-LAX and I could catch the connecting flt from there to HNL, my final destination.

I went to the gate and was told by the service director that although there were seats, my fare did not allow me to connect in LAX. In other words, she could not issue a boarding pass from LAX-HNL due to my fare. I've never heard of such a situation in my over 20 years of flying with UA.

Both agents I spoke with at the 1K desk could not understand why I couldn't be rebooked on the HNL-LAX flight. Since I did not make the flights it meant that UA had to pay for a meal and hotel voucher, surely a loss of revenue for the company.

I wrote to customer relations and this was the response:

Thank you for contacting us about your return flights to Honolulu.

I'm sorry that you received conflicting information from our representatives over the phone. However, any voluntary changes to your ticket require that you follow the rules of the ticketed fare. For example, your flight out of Washington National was delayed due to Air Traffic Control and when you arrived at Chicago your next scheduled flight was operating as scheduled. At this point when you attempt to alter your schedule, or standby, then you will need to follow your ticketed fare. It's when you have an involuntary change that we book you on the next available flight.

Is this true? In my mind, my “decision” to change my flight was not a "voluntary" decision by me but by the obvious fact that my flight out of DCA was delayed. It is true that the flight from ORD-SFO was “operating as scheduled” but there was no way I could get on that flight since my flight from DCA landed 25 minutes after the ORD-SFO departed.