Layover on award became 8 hours with schedule change
I had booked STL-IAH-TPE with points in business class several months ago for Saturday, September 28th (IAH-TPE leaving at 1 AM on Sunday). IAH-TPE is on EVA. My layover in IAH was about 4 hours, which was long but not unreasonable. I just got a notification of a schedule change on the STL-IAH flight, my layover is now about 8 hours long, which is unacceptable. And that's the last STL-IAH flight of the day, so I'm trying to figure out what my options are here.
As I understand it, in the event of schedule changes, United cannot force an award seat on partners, but they can on their own metal. Instead of leaving Saturday, I could leave Friday if it's late enough in the day. It looks like there is an award seat on EVA's YYZ-TPE flight the day before (leaving at 1 AM on Saturday). There's no AC availability on STL-YYZ, and while it looks like there is availability on United from STL-DEN-YYZ, that's a bit of a crappy routing, and leaves too early for me on Friday. There is an STL-ORD-YYZ routing on all UA metal that lets me leave STL late enough, and I have a reasonable layover time in ORD and YYZ, but there's no award availability on it.
If I call United, would I have a shot at them putting me on STL-ORD-YYZ-TPE, leaving a day earlier? I don't have any status with them, but I'm hoping they can accommodate me a bit, because I really don't want to kill 8 hours in IAH.