Originally Posted by
Wet Hen
How do you know this part with certainty? Are all one-stop itineraries married?
99% of all UA-operated, one-stop, non-award itineraries use married segments. I grant that it is
possible that your earlier flight didn't, but the odds are definitely in my favor.
Originally Posted by
Wet Hen
With the previous itinerary, the first leg was cancelled, and united's proposal was for me to just fly the 2nd leg.
I suspect that the second flight wasn't sold out. Even if it were, the schedule change would make it easier for a UA agent to get permission to override the computer.
Originally Posted by
Wet Hen
I think it is a fair criticism of my efforts to say that I'm asking them to fix a problem that hasn't happened yet.
I don't think there was anything wrong with asking. And, the thing is, what you're trying to do makes total sense in a lot of other contexts -- if you were buying a table and a set of chairs, it would be very strange if they refused to let you change out the chair design because it was
required to match the table. Air transportation isn't sold like anything else in the world. And, frankly, while I can explain the
mechanics of married inventory, I don't really expect it to make sense to people.
Sadly, there aren't a lot of great options here. The most likely ones that I can think of would be exorbitantly expensive (and you'd still need to find a UA agent willing to bend the rules). You could
probably cancel your whole trip and rebook, but the fare would go up by thousands of dollars, because now they're the last four seats in J. And, there's always the chance that somebody grabs the seats away from you while you're in the middle of the rebooking process.
Originally Posted by
Wet Hen
When I started this thread, I was concerned about the connection time. I thought I might be able to pay to make a change, but couldn't so I just decided to roll with it. Then the cancellations started happening. To me, at some point the number of cancellations crosses a threshold where it's fair for the passenger to request a schedule change.
I can see your point of view. From an airline's point of view, though, they're going to say that they've had a run of bad luck but that there's no reason to believe it will continue. The truth is probably somewhere in between -- UA's cancellation rate, from the most recent statistics, is 1.6% (trailing twelve months through March 2022). Their on-time arrival rate (where "on-time" is "less than 15 minutes after the scheduled arrival time") is 80%. (These numbers are for mainline; it's harder to get values for specific United Express carriers though). I'm not claiming that EWR can't be a zoo at times -- it certainly can -- but that doesn't mean that all connections there are hopeless. Most people will make their connections fine -- it's just that you only hear about the people who don't.
On the day of your flight, keep an eye on the weather, and the "where is this plane coming from" in the United app. Be prepared to go to the airpot earlier and try to get onto the previous flight if necessary. And keep in mind that EWR-SNN might be delayed as well.
Good luck!