Business Award Flight Schedule Changed and I no longer have seats assigned
 

Hi, I booked 5 business class tickets for a family trip to Europe on miles that I've been saving for years. I have Business Class seats to Europe and premium econmy seats on the way home. My flight schedule was just changed. The original departing time was 12PM and is now 5PM. The return flight was also changed by 5 hours.

Now, on both flights I no longer have assigned seats. When I look at the available seat map there are no available seats.

After a long wait I was able to connect with United customer service on Chat and he told me that he can't assign seats and that it will have to happen at the airport when I check in.

Has anyone else ever had this happen? If so were you able to keep the same class as when you booked your flights?

Any help is appreciated.

Yes, this happens. Yes, you should be able to keep the same class of service. You have options, although we probably need more information.

- Is this a ticket you booked on United miles?
- Are the flights all on United planes, or are they on one of United's partners? If it's on a partner, the United agent might not be able to select seats, but they should be able to give you a record locator for the partner airline, and you should be able to call that airline and select seats.

The five-hour change is significant and should allow you to make changes to your reservation without a penalty, even if the options are currently listed as costing more United miles than your initial reservation.

If the flight is purchased with United miles and United (or one of their subsidiaries) flies the entire way to your destination, you should be able to change the reservation to one that fits your desired times, regardless of the cost. If you're flying, say, from Cleveland to Stockholm, you should be able to change to a CLE-EWR-ARN that fits your desired time without triggering any increase in price. If you get push back on this from a United agent, you'll need to hang up and call back, but you should eventually find an agent who fixes this.

If the flight is purchased with United miles and United does not go all the way to your destination on their own planes, you have flexibility, but it might be trickier. For example, if you were flying to a small town in Germany, you might be flying United to Frankfurt and then Lufthansa from Frankfurt to that town. United can't open up availability for that final Lufthansa flight, but they can get you to Frankfurt on your desired schedule on United flights.

If you can give us more details, we can do more to assist. Either way, you shouldn't be downgraded because of this change.

Moderator, please move to UA forum as it appears to be UA related.