random.parts

Why would you use UA’s app for a LX flight? That seems counterintuitive.

cfischer

precisely. You call LX to get a seat on LX-op flights and you use united.com for UA operated flights. Works all the time.

NYC1

I’m not sure what you’re saying but $5500 for a full fare business class ticket from the US to Europe is not “outrageously expensive” in terms of what real prices are in this market. In fact, it’s on the low side. And comparing it to the special 2 for 1 F deals out of Europe to South America is apples to oranges. I don’t like these prices but that’s what they are.

weero

Did you guys not read what I wrote to these instances ?

"The same flight on SWISS.com" - so it doesn't work "all the time". It actually never worked since Oct.

My ticket was UA stock and my UA flights connected onward to LH and LX respectively.

ced_lx

I think OP just meant a paid ticket. Full fare/business flex tickets are brutally expensive from the US to Europe. Just a quick search for BOS-ZRH shows 4k RT for basic C fares and 10k for full fare and I've seen much higher. Anything under 4k is a good deal these days.

random.parts

From the previous post you seem to be expecting UA tech to assign seats on LX planes and because it doesn’t, you are blaming UA - when your issue is with LX, the operating airline, no matter the ticketing party.
I cant speak to LX website/app tech. I use UA’s app extensively for UA planes on AC, LH, and UA tickets - and it works without issue. Same with getting seats (and not much else) on LH, AC planes through their app/websites even on different ticket stock.

Im not understanding the screenshot of Swiss.com that says the flight had been fully flown - and the UA app says cancelled or not confirmed. What is the problem?

Was it that you flew the first segment and then tried to log into swiss for the second flight to make changes but Swiss thought the trip was complete? Thats still a LX problem, and should have been able to take care of it by calling LX or talking to an airport agent, especially on the day of the flight since they would have control of the ticket and it was on their plane Just dont see where UA has anything to do with it at that point

NYC1

For NY, 5K is a good deal today... Prices are through the roof / back to pre-covid.

weero

Yes I do and I do.

I didn't use AC since Canada turned into a fortress but I too recall that it worked smoothly in the UA app then. LH intra-Europe feeders do not work reliably anymore on the UA app. It offers all kind of upsell crap but then cannot reliably check you in (it does occasionally work though).

That either statement made - "canceled" and "flown" - is utter Bravo Sierra. Upon calling LX, I was given a seat without issue. But I LOATHE calling LX because of the constant "we experiencing higher call volume than usual..." lie paired with lengthy wait times.

No, this was checking in from the origin.

On a TATL to Europe, this is no good. I need the BP from the start and it was within the silly 24h window.

They sold me the tickets and then they mess up the check in.

But most importantly: this worked just fine prior to all the silly enhancements of the UA website and the app; OCLI UA to LX worked since LX became a *A member AFAIR.

rford

Yes, I did do that - on swiss.com I very clearly chose my seats on the return (UA) flight - they had the seatmap of the UA plane up and I properly chose the seats while cross-referencing seatguru.

It was a very straightforward operation and there was no confusion.

Then, later, we find that we have no seats on any of the fights - they just lost all the assignments.

For the SWISS legs, we simply paid an EXTRA $200 per passenger to choose a seat since all of the no-charge business class seats were now already booked. We chose $0 seats originally but now we were forced to buy $200 sears.

But for the UA return, Swiss says do it with UA and UA says do it with Swiss. So who knows what seats they'll put us in when we actually fly that day.

Sorry - I am not installing the popeyes chicken app and I am not installing the NBA-on-TBS app and I am not installing the United Airlines app.

Let me guess - location data, all contacts, messages ... browsing history ... what other permissions does their app ask for ? Forget it.

rford

Yeah, sorry - I don't know the lingo ...

I just meant that I paid actual cash money and did not get an award or a credit card deal or miles ... like I just went to swiss and bought a ticket for the price thay asked using money.

Looking more and more like "schmuck" is the correct technical term.

random.parts

No airline or other company is going to have better knowledge and control over seats than the airline who owns those seats. I prefer to save the trouble of relying on a 3rd party to fully & properly integrate with all other competing airlines while also staying current with their breaking changes - and will instead go straight to the operating airline who owns the seat I want to sit on. (I dont like calling either - but if LX cant properly book seats on their website for LX planes, thats not any other companies problem or responsibility)

The check-in is odd. Im trying to remember if I ran into something like that, but cant remember when I last tried to use an app or website to check- in for a multi-airline int’l flight.

For those types of trips, I use an agent at the origin to get all the boarding passes - something must have caused that behavior. Probably ran into the types of errors you ran into or something similar. Then probably stopped bothering with it, and now always get the boarding passes from a human. Which is something I loathe and avoid if at all possible, including only traveling with a single carry-on sized bag and booking single carrier tickets.

ced_lx

Don't get me wrong, I get that feeling. You pay big bucks for a ticket and you get threated the same as the guy on points next to you. Just remeber that the points arent't free. Somebody is paying for it somehow. In my experience, you get perks by either having status or just going through the same airports ofthen enough that you actually get recongnized. Points are being devaluated by the minute as well.

weero

The real fun begins, once you'll be booted from those....

The UA app isn't all that intrusive but it won't help either.
This is just the state of affairs between UA and LX these days.

dkc192

This won't be helpful for your current trip, but for future reference: should you find yourself in this situation above on LX again, do not pay for the throne seats. Just wait until OLCI opens, and you'll have access to them free of charge (or some of the free seats will have opened up and you can choose those too).

weero

But with the current wait times, you are looking at a 60 minutes wait @1-3 dollars a minute roaming cost for a flight that lasts 40-90 minutes. Hence calling simply isn't an option for me.
I'd rather sit in a middle than spending more than 5 mins on the phone.

It's pretty standard since November though. It never worked for me since then.

These things worked smoothly 25 years ago, I had directions with 3 different carriers on one booking and never had trouble getting seats and BPs as far back as 1998.
It's just that the airline IT today uniquely serves shafting the customers by selling them <expletive> that used to be free.

Greed.