hobo13

No kidding. I had horrible experiences on 3/5 and 3/6 with upgrades. Ended up in economy. And even met a supervisor who of course denied that there was any problem.

Some sort of compensation is in order.

qukslvr619

I got a lousy $150 off cert. Told 1K customer care that's great and all but $150 isn't going to change the fact that the next trip I fly I won't be able to sit with my wife. Oh but you can "inhibit" the PNR they say....a lot of good that does because then basically you skip to #3 in an upgrade queue and all of a sudden another seat opens up. Well if they would have left us on the same PNR, upgraded one of us wife would have stayed #2 and we both would have sat in F.

Interestingly enough today, wife stayed at #1 and quickly dropped to #4...because wait for it....a GS checked in. Now where is the logic in that...A 1K...meaning me...cleared before a GS. I suppose it's possible they were a displaced or irrops but according to GA oh that happens all the time.

Bottom line UA needs to either change their stated policy or fix res system. No incentive to fly UA with a companion. I'm not expecting an upgrade to F every flt because I didn't pay for it....but I do expect they aren't going to jerk me around or muck up a stated policy.

emcampbe

Same thing happened to me, though I'm a 1P, my SO a 2P. Records got split on the outbound, so for the return, we were each considered by our own status. On our YYZ-ORD leg, we both got upgraded in advance, me at the 48 hour window, her the day of travel. However, on the connection, I got upgraded at T-48, but she was still on the list at check in. Tried to add her as my companion at the airport in YYZ, and she tried, but couldn't confirm that it worked. At ORD, they said it had not been done, and they did it, she moved from number 4 to 1 on the list and got a seat. Luckily, though.

It does seem that agents, at least on the phone, can see a history of the record, and can tell that they were split. So my question is, why can't the system see that the record was split, and consider them companion reservations?

kmfdm91

Cheers.

Either COdbaUA needs to modify their stated policy or do something severe - like get rid of the terrible SHARES.

Companion upgrades do not work, it's as simple as that.

There were no threads on the PMUA forum about two passengers not sitting together, because it wouldn't happen. Fastair could actually handle 2 passenger PNRs that needed upgrades. It's sad that SHARES can only handle itins with 1 passenger, but that's obviously the case, plus the fact that SHARES doesn't really have a waitlist - when a single seat comes up for upgrade, it looks that the set of people that are desiring an upgrade and determines which from that list deserves it the most - not the same as a waitlist obviously, since this companion issue is coming up.

COdbaUA is flat out lying about this and the silence is deafening. CO basically took UA's policy which seemingly everyone enjoyed the most, but without a system to implement it.

Now, it's screwing people and families over and no one including UA Insider can admit that it does not work as set in their policies. Sad.

-jeremy

Nebsterco

Bought tix for myself and wife a month ago, with a lap child scheduled for wife. Cleared complimentary upgrade several days ago. Went on website back then and picked two adjacent seats in F.

Made mistake of selecting "add to upgrade list" on checkin yesterday. Got emailed PDF boarding pass, but no link to app or the electronic board pass.

Halfway into security line today at airport, decide that something is messed up because I cannot get a boarding pass up on my phone to scan at security. Remember seeing a thread with the word "auto-split" in it on FT, so run back to Chicken and punch in my MP number. Now I am the only on the reservation, plus my child is schedule in my lap. Wife is nowhere to be found. Don't know her MP number, don't have a credit card with her name on it, etc.

Find an agent and scramble to look up her record, log in, and get a boarding pass. Still in the same seat, but hers shows no lap child.

Run to gate, start scanning my BPs, and computer rejects them. I watch GA fiddle with computer, and it turns out gate computer shows lap child on original parent (wife).

We co-grumble about the crappy situation, which almost made me miss our flight (would be first time I have missed out of my home airport in, like, 150 flights). Now that I read this thread, I am still somewhat confused, though.

a) If I had not clicked "add to upgrade list," would our reservation not have been split? We were already assigned seats in F before I did check-in.

b) Now that I have clicked the button of death, are we screwed on the return, or can I call into UA and get them to rejoin the tickets? I don't want us split up with the baby because it will be a big challenge with a squirmy lap child.

c) Is there a way, for two-adult PNRs, to prevent split from ever happening? I am happy to get the early upgrade, but I don't want to mess around with the split-at-gate scenario as described. And it's not like those domestic F seats are all that comfortable anyway.

Sigh.

emcampbe

a) I had the same thing happen (in the situation I posted about above) - when I added us to upgrade list at kiosk, we had already been upgraded, but still clicked it anyway (more because it was 4:30am and I wasn't thinking clearly). I'm pretty certain this is where the record split, because the night before, when upgrade was confirmed, we were still on once record. So presumably, yes, if you wouldn't have clicked add to list, you should have been on one PNR - though on another note, why it asks if I want to be asked to be put on the upgrade list when we have received confirmed upgrade on all segments that day is another story.

b) UA can not rejoin the records - impossible once split. However, if you call in to UA, they can tell the records have been split - either record should reference the other. This won't help to get the same upgrade priority (unless you are the same status) - at least in my case, on the return, I cleared my upgrade at window before my SO, since she had lower status and our records were split.

c) Theoretically, if you don't want the records split, click no to all pax when asked at the kiosk if you want to be added to the upgrade list. Though fair warning, some others have reported that it got split automatically at some point before they actually checked in or were asked anything, but this is not supposed to happen.

DirtyDan

Hello FlyerTalk,

I was happy to see I cleared the 72hr upgrade to R on our last domestic leg until I went to pick seats online and noticed they had split the PNR giving me both a new PNR number along with the upgrade but leaving Mrs. Dirty back in Y cabin. I've never had them break our seats apart before, it's always been all-or-none.

After talking to csc, she informed that the new computer system will automatically split the PNR and upgrade only the elite status holder if there is only one R bucket available at the window. Luckily, I was able to get my original seat back (with only $40 of int'l roaming charges) but just though I would share this story.

Is this a new repercussion of the computer change? Should I be watching for it all the time now?

Happened to anyone else recently?

Regards,
DirtyDan

6rugrats

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...eeds-stop.html

91StealthES

Has happened to Mrs. Stealth and I on numerous occasions.

DirtyDan

OK... I* searched the forums for this issue and it sent me over to AA... Perhaps the mods would be kind enough to move this over to the thread already started.

*Seldom at the cutting edge of information.

aacharya

Why would you waste time/money getting back into your old seat?

Your companion would be next on the list, and might've been upgraded at 48 o 24 h out. Worst case, Mrs. DD would sit upfront. Now none of you will.

Ocean2Ocean

Admittedly the process is awkward and not at all intuitive but it did work getting my GM companion upgraded at my status without having to ask anyone to do it. I do remember "joining" the PNRs together with some checkbox but that may have been something different. Actually I think it was just to manage them together. Regardless, they have a long way to go to make this easy.

qukslvr619

And for tonight's experience SFOSAN...1 seat open in F. Agent in UA club had to get a PMCO agent to put wife at my status but a 1K companion must fall below a Platinum or Gold because she only moved from #17 to #13. GAs said well they go by their own status on day of departure once a PNR is split. Which can't be the case because on the flight up she stayed at #1 until a GS checked in. Even the old CO process was amazingly more transparent. If a companion doesnt clear in advance what the heck are you supposed to do. If the last person to clear has the highest status wouldn't it stand to reason that if a seat would open up the companion should clear next not someone with lower status?

UA Insider I really hope your reading this because someone needs to clarify this. What is the official companion policy? Is this just a temporary issue that is going to be resolved. I just want to be able to sit with my wife if a seat opens up.

Nebsterco

Yeah, I had a few hours at IAH yesterday to deal with this on my return flight, and so I spent some time running my complaint up the personnel ladder there. Which was somewhat interesting, since all those people are SHARES people who like the old system and know it well.

I had a lot of trouble getting anyone to acknowledge that the way it is implemented is problematic, much less my preferred term ("sucky").

My wife was definitely not auto-tagged as a "1K companion", and even after they did it, there were tons of people above her. I don't really understand how different the 24-hour upgrade window is than the multi-day upgrade window, but it seemed weird to me that I would clear several days earlier (on split PNR already) and she would then be #13 or something on the list at the gate 4 hours in advance.

When we got to the gate, I just asked them to move me back into my economy seat next to my wife. The flight was full at that point, so I know they had to move some other people around. Then, strangely, at the very last minute they came on board and give my wife and me adjacent F seats! Go GA... except, when we got up to F, there were like 6 or 7 empty seats that no one was upgraded into, which doesn't make sense.

So basically it is pretty buggy.

justhadtosay

So... like everyone else on here. at T-24 the PNR split me and my wife and now when I go online I see that she now has to pay ridiculously high charges even to change from the middle seat that she was in in E+ if she wants another seat. This would not be the case if we were still on the same PNR. Here's my biggest fear - now they will make her pay baggage fees at the airport when previously she could check 3 for free. Even if I have the time to argue with the GA, it sucks. Can anyone confirm that the system is at least smart enough to recognize that originally we purchased the reservation together and that she still should get all her bags for free?