A Cautionary Tale About IIROPS
 

I had a ticket on UA with the outbound operated by CO and the return by UA.

Of course my return flight was delayed - so my cell phone rang with a recorded message from UA telling me I had been rebooked. Wow, sounds great right? Wrong. I was left on my original outbound but rebooked on my connection leaving the morning of the following day - what the hell??

I called the CO Elite Desk and had an amazing agent who invested 40 minutes of time to get UA to fix my flights. The UA agent refused to rebook me on the last flight out because the connection at DEN would be 40 minutes - she said that was an invalid connection :confused::confused:

I had enough and asked the CO agent to find me CO-operated flights through IAH which she was able to do - but things went south when she tried to issue seats and re-sync the ticket so I could check-in.

Because UA still had me checked-in for their original flights, she couldn't update anything even after changing the segments and was not able to re-issue the ticket. Both of us had enough after that, and I suggested she get another UA agent to uncheck me in from the UA flights then push the ticket to CO so it could be re-issued and sync'd - it took forever, but once that was done, she could confirm the correct segments, get me seats, and sync the ticket so I could check-in and get on the upgrade list.

So, if you're a CO flyer with a UA ticket that's causing issues, and you prefer CO flights, try to get a helpful CO agent to make UA push the ticket to CO and let them make the changes correctly and re-issue it.

The only way I'm booking a mixed metal flight is when I'm buying a refundable ticket on business travel, no matter if it is ticketed on UA or CO. I'm staying away from any mixed metal flight where I'm buying a nonrefundable ticket, until I'm sure the new UA has their act together.

This isn't an issue with the New UA not having it's act together but the way sUA computer system deals with tickets and reservation records.

I deal with this issue almost every flight I am a gate agent for. It is what it is until we all go to the same computer operating system. Believe me it is frustrating for all of us, sUA and sCO.

Agreed. There is too much uncertainty with this mixed operating state. Integrating two large systems can be painful, but as a personal flyer I can see no compelling reason to share the pain.

I'm going to take the next year off, for loyalty to any one carrier, as I don't plan on flying >50K miles. I'll fly UA if a flight works for me, other carriers if another flight works better. I'm sure as hell not going to fly to Anchorage for 60 minutes next year!

If they actually get E+ into the CO fleet, if they actually put $50 million into upgrading the hard product, if they actually sort out a multitude of current issues, I'll look at them again late next year. Being top tier elite does make flying easier, and you can get to an awful lot of places on UA.

I'm mildly optimistic they will get their act together eventually. The old UA is gone for good, draw a line in the sand and put the past on one side and the future on the other.

Hmm, unless something has changed at DEN, that doesn't sound right for a UA->UA connection or even a UX->UA connection. You might have entered "hang up and try again" territory".

Glad to hear you found a way to do this. My experience has been that there are two easy ways to cancel your checkin ("get offloaded") without being at an airport: (1) DIY on united.com, assuming your record hasn't changed so much that this is impossible (2) United's Web Support phone line, who can do this in ~5 minutes.

Do you think that could have saved time if you had done it up front (call UA, say "a CO is agent helping me add a bunch of CO flights, can you give them control of the ticket"?).

Appears to vary from 30-40-45 mins for DD depending on outgoing CO flight
[KVS Availability Tool 6.8.1/Diamond - Reference: Minimum Connection Time [MCT]: DEN/UA-CO]

Good call. How strange.