Beyond the F later vs. Y now, is there a third path of F on a different carrier?

Good question. There must be some rules here. And the only way any pax will get F on another airline is to know those rules and dig in their heels!!!

It takes more effort to re-route on another airline and sometimes the employee re-booking may just be too lazy to do it. They should be required to by law when it`s within the airline`s control. As for downgrading paid f/J passengers it happened to me a couple of years ago. I was travelling YUL-EWR-FCO and in EWR I was about to board was told that I was being downgraded since they need my seat for a family who mis-connected. Seemed they were higher status and as I ( and another passenger) was on an Air Canada ticket ( in PAID business class). I was chosen as they wanted to give priority to `their own` passengers. I found this out after the fact from a sympathetic employee. Was told by the gate agent though that `we don`t have to have a reason` to re-seat you. I am not certain if the passengers were GS or knew somebody at the airline but I didǹ`t take the flight and managed to get re-booked in my paid cabin via FRA by that sympathetic employee who couldn`t have been nicer, took time to help me and apologized for the what happened. It looks to me like, in practice at least, the policies are whatever each employee decides what they are going to be on any given day. Thankfully there are still good employees out there who know how to do their jobs.

UA treats anything other than "F" booking class as a coach fare with upgrade so I doubt they would want to rebook you in first class on another airline if you are on "A" or "P."

Not the OP per se, but there are countless threads and posts over the years, before and since the merger, where GS members have thrown their hissy fits with phone or gate agents in order to get someone bounced from their seat assignment. I remember one gem from years back where a GS threw a fit onboard, after their upgrade didn't clear, demanding the parents of the poster who were flying on F award tickets be thrown into coach so the GS could sit in F, and there are lots of other examples.

Even "F" fare class isn't immune anymore

I bought an F ticket (300% PQM) but it had an underlying M fare class (OP-UP (maybe UP DI) is the term the phone agent used to describe the fare), when they put me on Delta for the flight, I was booked in coach, took me a 30 min phone call to the 1K desk to sort it out.

Post 99 upthread

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this isn't a matter of "All A/P fares are UPDI fares", but rather "Some A/P fares are UPDI fares, or other weird variations of coach-with-upgrade, and it's very hard to tell in practice." I think there are still at least a few honest to goodness A and P fares, no?

OP-UP, or UPDI? If the former, I'm inclined to think the agent was just using the wrong phrase, since op-up usually means "operational upgrade" and is totally different. UPDI fares are the ones giving everybody fits in this context.

And, FWIW and AFAIK, these are supposed to be treated as premium cabin fares for all purposes including irrops, according to official policy. It's just that a lot of agents don't understand the system.

All domestic premium cabin fares begin with an Economy letter except for the following: FUA, FUA2F, FUA2FNR, F, JUA, J. Furthermore, all other domestic premium fares are differentially fared, except for the p.s. fare table and certain very expensive fares. On F/A scale routes, this means that many fares with an F booking code begin with an Economy letter.

Naming for the differential fares is very non-standard, and United changes the patterns of the fare bases rather often. But given their prevalence, it should be very clear that they are "true premium fares" in whatever possible sense that should be relevant. Especially when the basis uses the /UPDI suffix, it can be easy for a lazy/inexperienced agent to assume it's an instrument or other upgrade, as for example a "TOD" offer can force a revenue premium booking code like A on top of an Economy fare basis.

So an agent might be stuck trying to tell the difference between:
and possibly on a tiny screen which happily chops off the rightmost part of the fare basis.


But if you purchase a ticket in "United First" you are buying a real ticket, and you should stand your ground and insist on proper accommodation.

Might have been UP DI - either way, once a supervisor was involved it was handled rather quickly

I stand corrected! and educated.

As an 11-year GS, I can state that I have never thrown a "hissy fit" on a plane, in a gate area, in a lounge, or on the phone. It's just not my style, nor does it do anyone any good!

There was on instance, a few years back (when this itin was possible) when I was flying JFK-IAD-LHR and onwards to GVA. It was the morning flight out of IAD so I was on a very early flight out of JFK. I was in paid C and had used a Systemwide (remember them?) to F IAD-LHR. The GS agent couldn't print out my IAD-LHR BP. He had no idea what had happened; he tried to re-route me on another morning flight out of JFK nonstop to LHR on another carrier, but none were available in F or C. He told me to go to IAD and that he would keep working.

IAD worked hard, and although one very junior gate agent offered me a seat in Y but promised me a C meal (which I declined). Finally, a supervisor downgraded an upgraded passenger back to Y and gave me my C seat (that I had purchased). She then came on board and gave me a $1500 voucher for the downgrade.

It turned out that a gate agent downstream, at MCO, had displaced me and 3 others from F to accommodate a family who had missed their original flight. They were on discounted economy tickets, but the agent decided to make them feel good and put them in F. How did I find this out you may ask? Well, the woman across the aisle from me in C was actually one of the family of four. They had to move her from F to C because the agent in MCO somehow gave her the seat assigned to the resting pilot. He got his seat back.

When I told her my saga, she felt terribly about it, and offered to have her husband or one of their sons (8 and 10) move back and allow me to sit in F. I told her that I paid for C and I would keep this seat, and that her family should enjoy their flight in F and consider playing the lottery when they landed at LHR.

So, not all GS are bad. And not all GA are good. But we should never judge!

:eek::eek::eek:

What on earth would possess a GA to do something like that? With the amount of extra effort needed to fix things (the blocked crew seat got assigned?! - should be held from inventory which would imply the GA force overbooked F), not to mention your $1500 ETC, have to wonder if the GA got fired.

Seems like all named in the story had a good ending. I can only hope the other two displaced F pax were similarly accommodated.

I have no idea what the ultimate outcome was for the GA, but you can be sure that I sent in a note making sure the correct folks were aware of the issue.

I also have no idea about the other to displaced pax; I only learned about others being involved after I was already on the plane. I was not happy with the stress involved, but the ultimate resolution was good.