For year 2006 I was just shy of *A Silver (United 2P) so I booked a flight with US Air ISP-PHL-LGW to make status for the year. On the day I was flying, the ISP-PHL leg was cancelled due to a mechanical problem. I was shuffled in a cab and sent to JFK where I was put on a BA flight to arrive at LHR at the same time as I would have on the US Air flight.

In the past when this happened to me, I submitted my itinerary to United and was credited for the orignal flights. I was told though being that BA is not *A member, United cannot give me mileage credit despite the cancelled flight. Had I known this I would have waited until the following day to take the next US Air flight. Not only did this cost me status for the year (bonuses, etc.), but I purposely booked the flight out of ISP as I didn't want to fly out of JFK. If I did I could have bought a ticket for much less than the routing I did book. To add insult injury I was crammed in a middle seat. I was *A Gold the year prior and already have 9 *A flights booked in 2006.

What would you do?

Could you find a senior UA marketing/local manager person to write to?
This worked for me with another airline.

How about a senior MP person?

When New Orleans was under water it took us four attempts and a trip to the airport to reroute to avoid the closed MSP without an additional charge, as a result of one operator putting a comment to charge for the change. This was despite UA's website stating that changes out of MSP post-Katrina in September were free of charge.
I'd hope that your documentation of your miles plus the nine trips planned would be enough reason to be flexible in this case, if UA wants to keep loyal FFers.

Wow. Was MSP closed after Katrina too? Since Minneapolis-St Paul airport (MSP) is over 1000 miles from the Gulf coast, that must have been one hell of a storm.

cheers,

Henry

you should have insisted to fly on *A flight.
Once happened to me in GRU, UA bird was down, they try to put me on Contonental flight without MP, I refused and insisted to fly RG, really bad but at least with MP.
I thing you should insist with UA to honor these miles.

I spoke with United and they told me to talk to US Air about it. I haven't yet spoken with US Air as I was hoping to get some input before doing so.

Usually when rerouted, you can double dip and get mileage credit on both airlines. Who the other airline is shouldn't matter.

You should insist and insist and insist and insist until someone will do the right thing.

If it was LH you would not have any problem. Several time LH have put me on another flights (not weather, not mechinical problem, just a plane arriving late - meaning I'll miss the last connection of the night in FRA). Afterwhich a quick communication with M&M granted a full credit of those flights (including bonuses and special promotions at the time). The other carrier was not *A.

When you get rerouted by an airline, e.g. if UA rerouted you to BA, contacting UA would give you the UA miles pretty quickly. When another airline is involved, it gets a bit tougher. Thankfully I've never had such a problem.

goodo

Happened to me recently. Booked on Austrian, rerouted on Syrian Arab Airlines, no less. Send a fax to Mileage Plus, credit appeared within a few days without quibble. Although interestingly my statement showed the Austrian flight on which I was originally booked.

Was re-routed by United onto a BA flight in January.

(My original itinerary was a UA from BOS - IAD - LHR
I got rerouted on a direct flight with BA from BOS to LHR. Nice!)

Full credit for the UA flights was posted to my UA account about 4 weeks later (after sending two reminders to the Mileage Plus folks).

I also submitted the BA boarding pass from that trip to JAL. I am waiting to see if they give me some miles in my JAL account.

I guess I could also have started a frequent flier account with BA, since the boarding pass indicated "Y" fare. But I don't want the orphan miles...

My advice is to be persistent with the folks at UA.

Be persistent with UA. I was bumped from a full UA flight to Midwest Express a while back. UA gave me the miles. Took a couple of calls and submitting the boarding pass, but got it eventually.