Originally Posted by
marks88
FYI a lap infant I added over the phone with the UA "elite" (non 1K) agents on Sat morning only arrived in my inbox / showed up in adult's reservation today, on Tuesday. No clue why it took so long for an all UA J ticket, unless it needs to be manually processed on papyrus by a monk who can only respond by carrier pigeon. But if that is how UA handles its own metal, I can't imagine that partner tickets are any better.
IIRC (worth noting we passed the lap infant stage now for a few years), child tickets need to manually processed, and are done so in priority order, based among other things, days to departure. So your request might be in behind another made at the same time if say, they are departing in the next week and you the next month. IME.
I think it usually took days to a week or two for ours - we usually book a month to two in advance.
Originally Posted by
WanderingWanderer
An off-topic follow-up.
I wanted to wait until my wife completed the flight today before making the actual complaint, and what she said about her flight surprised me.
She is very used to Polaris and seems to like it well enough, but this flight was all on LH flights, including the hop over the Atlantic. I thought it would be better for some reason, but boy was I wrong. She said the seats were not as comfortable and that the food was inedible (which makes sense in a way; Germany is not known for it's cuisine.)
However, what surprised me most was her complaints about the staff.
On United flights, we've had stewardesses on every flight I've been with her on actually offer to take the baby and just hold her/play with her, which we have taken them up on. Sometimes they hold them all through the meal service for up to an hour or so. And as our child is very particular and will not fall asleep unless rocked in our arms while listening to her specific sleep song on a cell phone (or a customized version of "Mary had a little lamb" sung by me), we've been welcomed to stand in the galley or other open areas to get her to pass out.
However, on the LH flight, they refused to let my wife linger in any part of the plane while standing up, so she had to stay seated the whole time and, at one point, since she wasn't getting rocked out, the child screamed for over an hour straight at full volume (which must have been a treat to others in biz class).
I think if we ever have an option on the future, we'll make sure all the long legs to Europe are on United rather than LH.
IMO, if you are expecting
flight attendants to be a nanny for you, your expectations are way out of whack. Many FAs, especially in the US, sticks strictly to the contract, and will not even help people lift bags, much less their baby. While I have had FAs stop by to say hi to our kids when they were infants, I have never seen them, nor would I expect them to, help babysit or other, much less for an hour, while they are running the meal service which is actually part of their job. We always managed, including with my wife or me sometimes eating while they were on our lap (did it on the ground sometimes anyway…in most cases not that much more difficult on a plane). I will say we had a team of servers at a Marriott hold/play with our baby one morning at breakfast when it was pretty empty once, for maybe 10-20 minutes, but not something we asked for or expected. Just kind of happened.
probably best to have more realistic travel expectations. FAs aren’t and shouldn’t be Nannies - if you want that kind of help, bring one with you (or fly, is it EY, who actually does have a nanny on board).