Originally Posted by
FAA1996
Managed to get 3 of our party on the 5:53pm flight tomorrow. I don't want to go home before they do because they are elderly and I would want to be here in case their flight gets canceled or anything. That being said I will keep looking for inventory on their same flight or the later flight tomorrow.
As an update, a supervisor at UA tried to get me on the AA flights but said AA wouldn't "accept" the booking. They must have tried something because I can now see an AA record locator for my flight on the UA app (shows as valid but cancelled on aa.com). The supervisor was able to force a seat for me on the same flight the rest of my party albeit in coach. Hoping an F seat open up and the flight actually operates. Not sure how this works on UA as most of my travel is on AA; does a person who paid for F but is traveling coach get added to the same upgrade list as everyone else? On AA there is a special code that must be added to show that you are an F passenger but traveling in economy because of the involuntary downgrade.
Once it's pushed to AA, you're booked in the cabin as booked, regardless of how you previously paid or which cabin you were booked in. If you stayed on UA, then you'll be noted as displaced F, which gives you a higher priority for placing you on the "upgrade" list ahead of others.
Originally Posted by
doc4science
They've been extremely stingy with me. They allowed *A rebooking, but refused to interline to an airline in a different alliance even going as far as to tell me multiple times that it is not possible due to a system limitation and has never been possible.
Originally Posted by
zombietooth
The fact that you get treated well in IRROPS and others do not, just shows how bad and inconsistent UA has become. Do they even have an official policy anymore? I've had agents tell me that it's not possible to put me on another carrier when no options are left on UA, and another poster here stated that they were told the same thing. Based on what you're saying, those statements are lies. It might be poorly trained agents or it might be cost-cutting. Either way, it's unacceptable.
Some above have said that AA probably didn't want the UA tickets endorsed to them because they were less than what AA could sell the seats for. But, I was just on a delayed UA flight where 4 pax were given $1,500- each to take a later flight in an oversold situation. It seems reasonable that UA could up the ante in a case where a family, in paid F, were trying to get home without having to fly on different flights. Is there no contingency plan for something like this?
UA can definitely interline you into another airline, but it's the least preferred method after its own and *A/partner flights. The challenge is that the current system makes it difficult for the agent to search for available flights on another airline. However, if you can do the homework and look up available flights for the agent, that would speed up the process (like OP did).