scracer14

Since booking...

the paper trail looked like PAX A purchases 9C T-30 days
PAX B purchased 9C at T-14 Days
PAX A and B hold 9C until T-2 Hours
After check-in (at some point after printing boarding pass and boarding), PAX A moved to 9A

The whole exchange was bizarre, but after looking at the other PAX's documentation, I couldn't find any reason not to believe him. He even had a printed boarding pass showing 9C which he printed from home when he checked in.

canadiancow

My friend and I, on separate PNRs, booked 1AB on https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Un..._777-200_9.php

We both had some level of status (he was AC*G, I was either AC*G or UA*S, can't recall) at check-in on our outbound on May 26, but removed it (neither of us know where we want to credit it yet).

At check-in today (May 31), we notice our seats are now 4B (me) and 1E (friend).

4B is comparable, but 1E is not.
And we'd like to be beside each other.

The aircraft type is the same.

There was no notification to either of us.

The issue isn't even that the seats were changed, just that there was no notification, and F is completely full now, with 7 upgrades (I do not know when those happened, but there were certainly open seats a few days ago).

Would a single PNR have helped matters? Maybe. Would keeping our statuses on the PNR have helped? I'm not sure. No one is willing (or able?) to tell us WHEN the change occurred.

But I don't see what's so friendly about these skies if you're going to separate me from my friend.

Had we known even 8 hours ago, we probably could have solved the issue ourselves.

It used to be that most UA flights would reaffirm my believe in just picking cheapest convenient F. But now I'm just leaning away entirely.

Oh, and 1AB are currently occupied by upgrades.

findark

Unfortunately there's some sort of issue with 1AB on that aircraft as they are sometimes blocked for crew rest. I'm guessing there was a glitch (blipped to blocked, and then got released).

Single PNR may have kept you together but no guarantees. I doubt status would have helped.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

How many times does your belief have to be "re-affirmed"? You keep coming back? Involuntary seat changes never happen at AA or DL.

Aussienarelle

So had never experienced this issue previously with UA, but had my first random seat change was on one of my flights on Tuesday. I had received an "elite" upgrade five days before the flight and was assigned seat 3A on an ERJ175 which was fine with me. I go to do OLCI at 24 hours to find I was now in seat 1C which was not good as I knew I may need the seat in front of me to store my luggage so changed my seat to 3D. It was all rather strange why they moved my seat,. I was not complaining as I had not paid for the seat and it was a short LAX-SAN flight, but did find it curious that they moved me and wondered if I should have "confirmed" the seat on my app as perhaps this would have kept the seating.

(Although not sure it would have made any difference to the FA as she kept referring to the person in seat in 2D by my name and the passenger in 2D looked very confused why she kept being referred to as "Ms Aussienarelle" so am guessing the manifest was completely screwed up for the seating arrangements, or the FA cannot read...which may have been a real possibility as she moved the luggage for the passenger in 1A to 7D while he was in the lavatory and we needed to tell him when we arrived in SAN where she had moved the luggage.)

Again, it was a CPU so not complaining but all in all the change in the seating assignment and the FA was an interesting short flight.

rmannion

I had something odd just happen - right in the middle of boarding, I found that my seat was reassigned (from 24D to 25H) without consulting me. I'm a bit annoyed by this because I always sit in D/F on widebodies to minimize bathroom traffic and because it feels more spacious. Has this ever happened to anyone?

EmailKid

There's a whole thread devoted to unwanted seat changes. So yes, it does happen, and there's almost never anything you can do about it unless your desired seat is still/again empty.

bocastephen

Did it happen just before you boarded? Did you insist on having your original seat restored, escalating to a manager as needed? Sounds like a GA just took your seat in order to accommodate another group without asking you first. Ask me first, and I will always consider it - just do it arbitrarily and my answer is always NO.

These things need to be escalated right on the spot - don't just sigh and resign yourself to a worse seat.

EmailKid

Given the Contract of Carriage odds aren't in passenger's favor.

Now that the question has been moved from simple question to this thread, plenty of evidence to support United's inflexibility.

Kacee

Agreed.

I called to vent when they did this to me recently, but it is a futile act and I felt no better afterwards.

And there is a risk of a confrontation that won't end well for the passenger if you "escalate" this with a GA or FA.

rmannion

Right! I sent an email that simply stated I was disappointed this happened without any heads up/consultation (I would have been fine with the move had it not been so... authoritative) and hoped that they could ensure passengers were better informed should this happen again. The reply I received included supremely human-sounding gems like:

EmailKid

Reads like computer generated gibberish

canadiancow

I was a little worried about that a week ago in HNL. But I wasn't going to put up with their BS.

It's all a matter of knowing the line (for "arguing") and not crossing it.

GA passed me to a lead of some sort, who then had to call a supervisor, but the supervisor got it worked out. Not how I wanted to spend 90 minutes at the end of my vacation (oh yeah, I was going to write in about it), but it could have been worse.

I find stern logical arguments tend to work well. You just need to get them to say "we can't just move someone out of their assigned seat without their permission", and then you win

lincolnjkc

Do you hear grinding gears and get smoke to come out of the agent's ears when you flip that around? While the majority of agents I've had help me have been great, there have been more than a few that I assumed were highly-functioning humanoid automatons.

Kacee

I'm sure the gate agents have another word for that kind of behavior.