Hello all,

My apologies if this belongs in an existing thread. I had booked an IAD -> SMF flight in August leaving IAD a little after noon and with a short layover in DEN. A few weeks ago, UA cancelled that first leg and re-booked me on an earlier fight, meaning I now have a 3.5 hr layover in DEN. Naturally, I went to "change flight", both in the app and on the site, to see what options I might have. I receive an error - see message below. In the past, I've called customer service and they've told me they "need to reissue the eTicket" so that I can request a change. I tried the chat interface yesterday and explained my situation. I was only offered a change via the CS rep; they wouldn't fix the error so I could change myself. I repeated multiple times "I just want this error fixed" and he kept suggesting specific flights. I then called via phone today and was told directly UA cannot fix this error. I was offered the option for the CS agent to change it for me, but was told "we cannot make a change that will allow you to change the flight yourself" (no reason given). This is puzzling, especially since in my experience, when this happens, I also cannot check in until the problem's fixed.

Does anyone have any guidance to share? I suppose maybe they're intentionally limiting self-change given the reductions in flights, reasoning that agents can make sure folks change to flights that are least likely to be cancelled. OTOH, I wonder if given the pandemic experience, they have some new agents that aren't aware of this problem. I would just like to 1) regain the ability to request a flight change and 2) make sure I can actually check in,

Thank you for any info!


Error message when I try to change my flight on the web site