findark

N67052:

positioned EWR-LAX as UA1102, a revenue flight
ferries empty LAX-SJC as UA2560
chartered SJC-IAD as UA2540 to carry the 49ers to play the Redskins

and will continue on in revenue service, IAD-HNL.

canadiancow

I have 8 intercontinental flights booked in the next 45 days.

Plus 10 transcontinental.

And tons of shorter ones.

I'm not even sure I can be bothered to set up alerts for the intercontinental flights.

I wish TripIt would handle stuff like this, as it actually has all my itineraries in it by default.

Maybe I can hack something together with their API to automatically set EF alerts

prh

Postscript: right after they announced that boarding would begin in five minutes, they called all three of us up to the podium and asked if we would agree to voluntarily agree to downgrade to economy for $500. We all demurred. Whereupon they told us they were doing it anyway. When we protested vigorously, they asked us to take a seat. Eventually they found two volunteers. We were the last three to board the plane. Two of us on opposite on opposite sides of first class, the third in economy, against wishes, but with $3000 in flight credits. Oh, btw, the gate agents were laughing at us and pointing at us.

Kacee

Yeah that sounds like UA at EWR.

Hope you all get quickly past the crappy UA experience and enjoy a great vacation in Hawaii!

JVPhoto

Another ski trip another 3 year old scattered about the plane. Was checking my reservations last night and SFO-YYC went from CR7 to CR2. Luckily it was mostly empty so I could get all 5 of us back in rows 2/3.

Fizzer

My wife and I are United Platinum /*Gold but live in YQR. As a consequence when leaving home our first segment is always on AC and we have to check in with AC. We have a trip to BKK tomorrow with YQR-YYC-( AC) and the rest UA and ANA. We had selected Economy Plus seats for the UA segments a months ago. I checked occasionally to make sure there were no equipment changes, as recently as a couple of days ago.

I was surprised to find today, however, that on on line check with AC the AC system had changed our seat assignments, separating us by several rows and moving us from E+, at least for the first segment.

A call to AC suggests that this was system generated and the agent says that they cannot change seat assignments on UA. UA says they cannot access the to change as the AC system has locked them out. We have to hope that those seats are still available when we get to Calgary tomorrow and that they aren't snagged by others at check in.

Fortunately it is on the shortest YYC-SFO segment but it got me thinking that something similar could have happened on the TPAC, when I would be pretty upset.

Has anyone else come across this or have any other suggestions on how to correct it or avoid it all together, without avoiding OLCI with AC completely?

WineCountryUA

UA operated YYC-SFO is a CRj-200 with only the first row consisted E+. Were you on a common PNR or separate PNRs?

It sounds like something happened that caused a seating sweep and this was mostly an UA caused changed. AC can not directly change seats on a UA operated flight.


Assuming Row 1 is filled, there is likely little that can be done about that but asking at the gate and if needed, then on the plane, you can probably address the separated seating.

Fizzer

We are on the same PNR. I'm not too worried about this segment but it got me thinking about if it had happened on a different segment and we had lost carefully planned arrangements. I have no idea how it happened.

SFOrunner

Are there any tools to see if an aircraft was swapped before departure? Assuming the same equipment / configuration, would seats get reassigned?

I booked a ticket for a me and a companion - UA 616 SFO-ORD - and as a Gold I selected two E+ seats, 11D and 11E. After checking in, we woke up to see that our seats had been moved to 12B and 12D. The Premier Desk and SFO CS reps couldn't (or wouldn't) do anything about it as the flight was full. Once we boarded, it sounded like a number of people sitting in the immediate vicinity had been reseated too. Fortunately we were able to move seats around so that everyone could sit next to the persons they wanted to, but unfortunately for us, we were moved from E+ to E.

Is it possible that all of this was due to a swap in planes after check-in? Or is it likely that someone at United moved us around to accommodate another pax?

WineCountryUA

a lot of tools exist for notifying of schedule/aircraft changes -- I use ExpertFlyer (subscription), but others exist. However, none are realtime or catch double changes within their sampling timeframe.

flightstats.com provides aircraft change data closer to flight departure

not always -- there are many reasons what appear to be the same aircraft still leads to seat reshuffling. Especially if on different PNRs. (did you try for an upgrade? That would have split the PNRs)

Did you voluntarily moved to E-? Or was this related to some of row 12-15 changing from E+ to E-?

Swaps to aircraft of similar, but not identical aircraft can occur after check-in.

For instances, there are 3 similiar but different 739 configurations
Row 12-15 are different in all three -- all, some or no E+
very unlikely but not impossible. Given there were multiple folks moved, it seems there was a general seat re-shuffling and you were not targetted.

WineIsGood

Well I'm back to FlyerTalk after a long absence...so long my profile still said CO* until moments ago!

Anyway, traveling for Thanksgiving with the spouse and realized our 21A, 21B seats on same PNR were moved. I was left in 21B, the spouse was moved to 20A.

So now I'm a 1K in a middle seat between 2 strangers, and Mr WineIsGood retains a window exit, albeit limited recline.

UA of course wouldn't do anything actually helpful about it. What was offered:
- Opportunity to swap me and Mr WineIsGood. Er...I wasn't going to take that offer - not a good idea to push your spouse into the worse seat, United.
- Explanation that seat assignments are merely requests and I shouldn't expect them to stick
- Compliments to themselves for not moving the 1K on the reservation but rather moving the UA Silver. Yeah thanks, I was dying to have 21B. Everyone's favorite is B. Keeping 2 pax together...less important than keeping me in the B seat I was so looking forward to!
- Compliments to themselves for not splitting up the PNR (not sure what good a combined PNR does when we're split up)

I guess a GS really wanted the full recline in 21??

wxguy

Sorry to hear of your troubles. Hopefully within 24 hours of flight two together that work for you will open up.

But the "GSs can force the seats they want" is a myth, and in my experience, completely false. As a seven-year GS, I've never experienced this, nor have any of the dozens of GSs I've talked to. There are many reasons for seat changes, but in my opinion being bumped by a GS isn't one of them.

WineIsGood

The call center agent specifically said it might have been a GS or “another VIP” - but interesting to hear you’ve never gotten that benefit!

iluv2fly

GS from the outset and never been offered this option. Never asked, either, since I don't think it's right. Not thrilled getting the last seat on an Asia-US flight and having to sit in the middle of four in C, but that's the way it goes.

kohswisscheese

Did you notice the seat changes the first time you tried checking in on aircanada.com? Or did you access the check-in page more than once?

I had a similar situation last week flying from YVR on a United booked and ticketed (016) itinerary with the first leg on Air Canada YVR to SFO. Economy+ seats selected months in advance, were showing correctly on united.com until T-24.

When I first attempted to check-in on aircanada.com, I accessed the check-in page (key in PNR, name, origin) and the seats were accurate at this time. I didn't have my passport information on me, and thus closed the session after accessing the booking (i.e. exited the session once I saw the itinerary). When I logged in again, the seats were now different and I was in an Economy- seat for one of the flights. I called United to see what they can do, we couldn't fix anything but the agent noticed that the system was telling them that I had checked-in then cancelled my check-in multiple times, including once while I was on the phone with the agent.

Through this process, we identified a system interface issue: On aircanada.com, merely accessing your booking using the check-in function signals to United's systems that you have completed check in. If you don't complete your check-in during the session (e.g. if you don't have your passport details etc.), United's system realizes you didn't actually check in (seems like a 5 minute time-out function) then proceeds to cancel the check-in. In this process, original seat assignments may be lost.

I've dropped Customer Service a note and they said they'd send it up to IT. Fingers crossed that it won't be a problem in the future. But in the meantime, the only option will be to complete checking in the moment you access the booking on aircanada.com's check-in function (or doing so at the airport) in order to not lose seat assignments.