TWA Fan 1

The truth is things improved dramatically at UA in the past 15 years.

The current issues, actually, are for the most part a function of the challenge of integrating systems with CO and the change in policies regarding items such as upgrades that have come along with it.

demosthenes1

I had pretty good luck getting protected on alternative flights during an IRROPS last week. They protected me on one alternative if my flight went, but was too late to make my connection, and on a second alternative if my first flight was cancelled altogether.

JonIND

As I said a few posts up, I have been protected with "just in case" segments numerous times in my history of flying with CO, most recently on the evening of 3/2 from EWR-IND just before the system changeover (and I made my original earlier flight and did not have any trouble boarding it).

Not sure why this doesn't match bocastephen's experience, but it was/is certainly possible from both a systems and policy perspective and never seemed to be a big deal.

Now, I'm not saying that CO was perfect in IRROPS situations... My biggest complaint was that the phone agents did not seem to be empowered to move passengers to other airlines or implement solutions other than changing a res to the next available CO flight(s) on the same routing. However, I was almost always able to get what I wanted/needed when dealing with agents at the airport.

Weatherboy

What city did this occur in and who protected you? Phone, ticket counter, United Club, customer service, or gate agent?

demosthenes1

Seattle.

It's possible that three different channels were involved in the first protection. I discovered my first flight was late as I was checking in my rental car. I called from the shuttle and asked for protection. That seemed to take forever, I was put on hold, I got to the terminal, so I hung up and went inside. I asked at the check-in counter. Was given boarding passes for SEA-DEN and for my original second flight, was told I was okay, but was not given anything to confirm that I was protected. So I went to the UCC, where they assured me I was, and hand wrote the back-up flight on my SEA boarding pass.

Once the plane arrived in SEA, the copilot did a walk around. He noticed an exhaust panel that should have been held on by 10 rivets was now missing 7 of the 10. (Thank you, sir, but I can only imagine how long this had gone unnoticed.) As it wasn't clear if the plane could be fixed that evening, I approached a GA. He agreed to protect me on the SEA-ORD redeye in case my plane never went. Since it did eventually go, I don't know for sure that I would have been on the redeye, but I have to assume that would have worked.

wpcoe

@sfogate: In this long, drawn out thread you might have missed a question I directed to you a few pages ago. Namely:

As one of the sCO/PMCO SHARES experts out there in the field, can you address what SFOfastair says:

i.e. How can a GA proactively process pax without a seat assignment in an equipment change, prior to the pax getting rejected at the gate scanner during the boarding process?

goalie

Redux +1,000,000 ^^

Weatherboy

Ditto from me. thank you fastair for your time and insights!

jetski1110

I still have yet for anyone to call me from UA or LAX. I'm still not at all satisfied with their handling of this and compensation. I believe a complaint to DOT is in order.

MrColdShower

This makes me just as outraged as the original post. UA has had plenty of time to make amends. I can only assume that UA is not interested in making things right to the affected passengers, but is only interested in damage control by compensating those who draw the most attention. My faith in this airline keeps dropping.

I hope you file that complaint.

bsmnsr

You should send a letter to the CEO's office. I'm sure a google search will give you his email address.

jetski1110

I did. I received a very generic response that didn't even touch on my issues.

Weatherboy

You should call or email UAInsider. Considering you had a mechanical even before stumbling into this Flight 90 mess, I'm surprised UA wasn't more proactive in reaching out to you yet. Perhaps stuff is still in the mail from LAX....

OnePass Since 87

I have been protected on a later segment, while keeping the original many, many times pre merger (CO) and once (a couple of weeks ago) post 3/3. Always for the same sort of scenario: a potential mis-connect. It has never been an issue. I've gone through the (CO) elite line, the Prez Plat line, the GS line, the club, even had a gate agent do it for me once pro-actively. I have never attempted it through regular CS channels, however.

The only hassle I had with the post 3/3 attempt was getting to speak with someone on the phone. Once through, it was not a big deal. The agent was helpful, constructive, and found me an M-Up seat to keep my butt in first. Maybe I have been lucky, but I have yet to experience any form of post 3/3 system or personnel meltdowns.

fastair

It's my pleasure. Every day, it gets a little easier. I still use my cheat sheets for just about every transaction, but now, I can find the ones I want alot faster (no 3 min searching then 3 min of typing, it's down to 20 sec of searching and 2.5 min of typing.) Still just doing the basics though.

I think alot of the agent side frustration has to do with the big merge of reservations from Apollo to Shares. Most of the tickets issued on any airline stock other than UA or CO (US code, or any other airline) still require ticket syncing after gaining control of an etkt that we should have control of to begin with, as long as they were issued prior to 3/3, but I don't see so many problems with tickets issued after that. Since tickets can be issued up to 11 months in advance, I expect that we will still have issues doing this for ages to come, but the % of old tickets will drop and the % of new tickets will increase. Who knows, maybe they will figure it out and have some sort of automatic sweep come in and fix them all...then again maybe they wont.

It's just 1 small thing to you all, but it takes a large amount of the gate agents time. When that time is returned to us, we will have more time to give more attention to some of the other details. This doesn't touch on any policy changes, but to be 100% honest, I am really not up on all of them. A small example would be when I started and relieved the AM shift person, he was making an announcement for "any military servie member..." I said "Wait, isn't it any military service member in uniform?" We couldn't decide. He was like "I do it for anyone and trust that they are what they say", while I said "I appreciate that, but want to follow the book while we are learning the new procedures." UA was "in uniform" but not sure what CO was, or which policy we took. I could have looked it up, but got sidetracked until just now, and I'm home so it will have to wait for tomorrow.

Big issues like the OP had...still far beyond my current level of experience or training. It isn't like they even mentioned a plane change or downsize in the 1.5 days (out of 10) of training that we covered gates (in a class of 100% gate agents,) and while dened boardings were mentioned in theory, the software they use does not work in the classroom, and requires an active live flight to work, so no exposure there. I've been uber-lucky and avoided so far, taking any DB's.

I've asked at least 15 different "shares experts" how to find an other airlines record locator number, and have yet to find a single person (other than the person who showed me by chance a week ago when I was too busy to write it down, or even the name of the CO shares expert) who can replicate it. It's amazing to me that IAH.CLE and EWR active CO employees have never felt a need to tell a passenger the other airline record locators...to me, that is common sense, if routing a passenger to another airline, give them everything they may need in case something goes wrong.

The system still fails in odd ways...I boarded a flight, I was done, and the gate reader app said I still had 20 more people to board. It was wrong. My CO shares expert was able to figure out how many people were on the plane, becuase the tools that I use were woefully inaccurate. However she did it, her number matched the onboard count, so no harm, no foul, but failures like this are still fairly common. In training, the direction was to "deboard everyone, start over, and manually board them, don't use the gate reader application." Really? I am to take everyone off the plane, and start over? An accurate knowledge of who is on is very important, both for safety and so tickets don't become void, but if this is not a rare occurance, I think the basics need to be fixed before they move on to the added applications.

Anyway, it wasn't a bad day for me...some poor joe working for DL said they had a terrible day at ORD, cncling an etire bank of flights this AM out of ORD, and given the spring break period and Sunday evening loads, didn't have many options for protection. My sympathies to him, but it kinda felt a bit good knowing that the grass often sucks for others, and that we (I) am not some statistical annomoly.