Originally Posted by
yonajon
Are they still fairly relaxed and accommodating? Any chance that, given Covid conditions resulting in non-full flights, they'll let me store it in an empty seat?
you mean with the current covid conditions, so resulting flights could be very empty or very packed (because UA trimmed their schedules or cancelled/consolidated into one flight)
first, check whether your aircraft has a closet.
even with a closet, likely J passengers have priority
even if it has a closet, aircraft could swap to another aircraft without a closet
then check how full the plane is (which could be misleading T>0-24 due to BE)
UA policy is to accept small musical instruments as carryon
in a hard case
if you don't like these risks, pay for an extraseat -
How to buy an extra seat? "EXTRASEAT" for paid or award flights