Originally Posted by
transportprof
Your certainty that phone agents cannot rebook you onto a *A carrier is misguided. I've had this happen, more than once, during IRROPS. If you get the right agent, and behave the right way, magic can happen over the phone line while the masses are waiting in an hour long queue for in person assistance.
Yeah OP is clearly just wrong on this point. We're still missing a key piece of information here, which is what was the cause of the inbound delay? If it was ATC (very likely given we're talking UAX into SFO), UA is not going to rebook him on another carrier unless he's GS or, maybe, 1K.