prh

Thanks for the advice. That's my plan -- I also called Mileage Plus and they've allegedly marked my record so that the Gate Agent is alerted to trying to facilitate the switch. The MP Agent suspects that we're not the only ones who've been separated, given how the re-seating was handled. I just wish we weren't both in window seats, since if one of us had an aisle making a swap would likely be easier.

emcampbe

not always that easy. Depends on how many pairs of seats there are in the old and new aircraft, and how many other pairs of travellers there are. It’s possibke that they put as many pairs as they could together after the sap, but for whatever reason, OP drew the short straw.

Also could be better than other potential situations. For example, if the choice was to either put the new aircraft type on, with some pairs having to get separated, vs. canceling a flight because they couldn’t find one of the same type, I know which one Is prefer.

yes, good advice to keep checking.

And many of us have had this happen. Had a domestic 777 swap two days before departure earlier this year from a 3-3-3 777 to a 3-4-3 one. Wife and I (and lap infant) on the same record, were split. It appears they tried to keep same seat letters - wife switched from a window seat to an aisle which had the same letter. I moved from my aisle seat to a window seat a couple for rows back, my seat letter didn’t exist, so i think hey just put me wherever else (ignoring my profile which has aisle seat preference). We were lucky, One of our rows had both other seats empty, so i was able to move us together, and the third seat remained empty so our lap child was able to get her own seat.

I realoze we were lucky, but between that and a canceled flight, I’d rather go, even if it means separate seats.

prh

Seat map yesterday had 15 pairs (configuration was 1-2-1) -- two of which were unassigned. New seat map has 16 pairs (configuration is 2-1-2), so they could have kept all the pairs together.

JVPhoto

It does suck and you'd think IT could assign doubles traveling together.
If I hadn't checked my HNL-SFO that went from 777HD to 773 my 2.5 year old nephew would have been sitting 3 rows back on his own.
We also had SFO-MTJ cxl and the rebooking was going to put him on a different SFO-DEN flight than the rest of us.

halls120

Pre merger I had this happen to us on a long haul flight. The difference is that the telephone agents did everything they could to get us seated together at least across the aisle from one another. What we didn’t get is “you’ll have to wait until you get to the airport and hope the gate agent will help you” kind of response which is now apparently the norm.

I get it that unavoidable aircraft swaps happen, and people are going to be displaced. What I don’t get is why United has abandoned it’s previously valuable CSR desire to make things whole before you get to the airport and Has embraced the “let someone else handle it” approach.

Artpen100

I also don't understand how the software does not handle seats in an equipment change better, and why it can take a long time for the website to catch up with the change. This is one reason why I use EF to alert to equipment changes. At least if you find out early, you may be able to call in and get it fixed easier.

prh

Gotta love this: UAL has now updated the status to say the inbound plane is coming from SJO, but the planes continue to not match up.

Also I tweeted about the situation and got a pleasant, but totally unhelpful response, from their twitter folks.

drewguy

It has gotten better through the alignment of row numbers across similar aircraft (so no more reserving row 7 on an A320 and then seeing a swap to a 737 that started a row 8)

But with a swap like a 767 to 777 things are going to go haywire.

drewguy

BTW, the United Cargo site often has had better information about which plane is flying, further in advance, than the passenger schedule:

https://booking.unitedcargo.com/skyc...wp:scheduleOpr

If you put in the route it shows that on 10/14 IAD-HNL is a 767 and on 10/21 it's planned for a 777.

findark

To add to the fun, I'm pretty sure the flight is badly overbooked since they sold into the larger equipment. Currently F0 Y0 with every seat in F except the block at 7D assigned.

prh

Yup. They just called me to offer us $500 to go thru SFO and arrive 4 hours later, assuming SFO isn’t fogged in. Of course, I could have booked that combination for more than $500 less at the time I booked the original flight.

drewguy

Well check the seatmap as others may take the offer and free up a seat!

Kind of f'd up, that's for sure.

prh

Checking hourly. I actually spoke to a supervisor and asked her to put something in the system to give us the seats that are given up. She put me on hold and came back and said she had tried but couldn’t get the system to do that. interestingly our travel companion did not get the phone call with the offer.

FWIW, the supervisor told me that the reason for the equipment change was that the larger plane had been diverted to ferry people to and from San Juan. If true, I feel better about the situation.

Exterous

They don't even seem to be able to send out email notifications of changes reliably. I have one flight thats gone through 3 aircraft (3 class 772 -> 2 class 772 -> refitted 789) and the wife and I keep getting scattered about with nary a word about the plane changes let alone the downgrade from F to J. Fortunately I keep checking and have been able to find seats next to each-other that work but I wonder how many people might not checking. I only seem to get equipment and schedule change notifications from them about 3/5 of the time.

prh

Update: by regular checking, i was able to move my wife to the seat directly behind me. I'm not sure that will help get us an aisle seat so we can get together, but at least we're now in shouting distance of each other.

And, in other news, the inbound flight is reportedly coming from SJC. However, United's timetable does not show any non-stops today from SJC to IAD. Flight status currently lists it as 90 minutes late, which doesn't affect tomorrow's departure, but interestingly, the inbound flight is reportedly coming from LAX, but once again that route doesn't exist and this time the flight number doesn't exist although Flightview (but not Flightaware) shows the flight number supposedly going from DEN to SJC, but says get info from UAL. It also shows an LAX to SJC flight with the number but it's called delayed.