Originally Posted by
cepheid
It's a fine line... you were on standby and therefore not entitled to any compensation, but once you received a boarding pass, you became confirmed and therefore might be entitled.
I've seen that logic on here before, but confirmed does not mean "given a seat assignment. Confirmed means having a reservation, and a cleared standby does not give you a reservation. You had neither a confirmed reservation, nor a ticket for that flight, so the agent was correct. It was a nice bonus that they gave you a travel credit, but UA was in no way obligated to do so. In another thread last night, I posted that I think all it will take is a few people who use a free standby option to get compensation when things go wrong for an airline to not allow this (although that is just a guess from me) as it puts UA in a $$ loss position, and they COULD go the way of US and WN and either charge, or not allow. it (my guess is charge as a la carte fees seems to be the "in" thing now days.)
From the CoC re: denied boarding compensation:
WHEN UA IS UNABLE TO PROVIDE PREVIOUSLY CONFIRMED SPACE DUE TO MORE
PASSENGERS
HOLDING CONFIRMED RESERVATIONS AND TICKETS ON A FLIGHT THAT
THERE ARE AVAILABLE SEATS ON THAT FLIGHT, UA WILL TAKE THE ACTIONS
SPECIFIED IN THE PROVISIONS OF THIS RULE.