Originally Posted by
IADFlyer123
If your outbound flight to India was so delayed, why did you not look for alternative options to reach India. You were in paid business and could have essentially FORCED United to book you in a similar class on any other airline. Leaving from EWR, you had so many options, LH/AI/LX. Looks like you insisted to stick to your original itinerary. Secondly, if UA put you on UA48, they would have told you about it and explicitly shared that you had Economy seats. And Y class is NOT BASIC ECONOMY!. When offered the UA 48, why didn't you ask for the DEL flight instead? Also, since you were choosing to go via HKG, why didn't you ask them to reroute you through JFK or IAD where you could have potentially gotten on CX's superior business class service.
At this point, you can file for downgrade compensation, though you have to be careful as they might claim the Y ticket you were booked in was probably more expensive than your original J ticket. If you have booked your ticket with a suitable card that offers delay compensation and baggage delay compensation, you can claim damages from there as well.
Keep in my mind I was travelling peak travel dates (weekend before Christmas). The Polaris lounge agent at Newark, tried ALL other airlines including NON-Star Alliance (i.e. BA, KLM, DL, CX, etc.) and Star (AI, LH, SQ etc). All Business class seats were full. They also tried routings, via JFK and BOS and IAD. The Delhi flight was full as well. I did not insist on keeping my HKG routing, I just wanted to get to my destination, but unfortunately because of the peak holiday travel, all Airlines were going full and I didn't want to split our family of 4.
The only 4 biz seats available were on the middle east trio (EK, ET and QR), the agent said they can't ticket us on those.
I know Y is full fare economy which was what I was downgraded to, but I compare with Basic Economy since we were only provided Middle class seats (only ones available)