United no longer offers priority rebooking for 1K's.
 

When checking I reviewed standby options and the next flight an hour later was still available. Then about half an hour later I noticed my flight was delayed 4 hours due to airplane servicing. I immediately called up 1K line, but the best they could do was rebook me onto a flight 3 hours later, not the next flight. I then went over to customer service to try and get on the flight or at least standby on the next flight. The customer service agents words were. "We had a bunch of passengers with connections to China who we already rebooked onto that flight, I can't get you on." They also weren't open to rebooking me on another carrier, neither did they offer any compensation.

This clearly isn't what the old irrops protection for 1K's was. I think I'm better off just using my corporate travel agent, cancelling my United flight and rebooking on another carrier when this happens again?

Not sure I understand. Were you at the airport checking in? If so, why didn't you just go to the gate of the earlier flight and ask to go standby, since you were already there? Chances are much better, and IME they usually do prioritize by status. Having said that, not too surprising they were trying to prevent a bunch of misconnects to China.

I did do standby, #2 on the list but they were oversold and I didn't clear.

See this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...customers.html

My bad. It sounded like there was a gap between the time you thought about it and when you actually called the 1K line...could have made the difference if so :)

Yes, like I said they no longer offer priority rebooking to 1K's... PMUA computers at least seemed to make an effort oftentimes an irrop would occur and you would be automatically protected, now nothing happens until you call in at which point it's often too late.

Do this. I did this a couple times this summer - I wasn't satisfied with the options UA gave me after flight cancellations, so I cancelled the rebooked segments and did walkup tickets on DL. Worked great.

Got ORC on UA as well, don't forget that part ;)

Interesting -- and disappointing if it becomes a pattern. For what it's worth, I had the opposite experience about 10 days ago. Two hour flight delay (aircraft servicing) on ORD-PEK, and I called the 1K line to see about my options if the flight went MX. After I specifically mentioned the new policy, the agent protected me on AA with no argument. Didn't end up needing it, but I felt awfully good about the treatment.

I hope your experience is a one-time disappointment! Sorry to hear about it.

Those were among the niceties we enjoyed on PMUA. At the moment I don't plan to requalify for 1K. One more reason not to regret that decision.

I can't say I'm surprised they would prioritize passengers who would misconnect to China over saving you from a slight domestic delay. Also, according to your timeline, you only requested 30 minutes before wheels up (which means boarding would have already started some time previous)

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I think there seems to be some misunderstanding how the rebooking works. The flights are worked on a per flight basis, and status is considered within that flight.

So if the China misconnects are processed first, they will get the inventory. In your situation, if you were on a nonstop, there was nothing to process, the assumption is you will ride it out unless you change.

I'm not sure I understand what your expectations were ... were you expecting them to IDB someone else so that you could make the flight? It sounds like the other flight was already oversold by the time you made it to the customer service counter. United has indeed curtailed its overly generous compensation practices (much to my own dismay), but I wouldn't expect a ton from a 4-hour maintenance delay.

I don't think it is accurate to say that United has ceased offering priority rebooking though. You were at the top of the standby list (behind someone who had higher status than you, most likely) and it sounds like you went out on the next available United flight. When I've had flights affected by cancellations, I've had agents move mountains for me, but that simply isn't the case here.

I just learned about protection... always call right when you can...early bird gets the worm...

PmUA certainly did prioritize international mis-connecting passengers ahead of domestic delayed passengers. Does it really make sense to have international passengers overnight somewhere just to get a 1K out an hour or so earlier?
Again, in the past pmUA WOULD NOT have put a 1K's name higher on a standby list over an international passenger who would mis-connect, and rightfully so! In fact, doing a walk up to attempt to get on an earlier flight, when people have been previously denied boarding due their flights being cancelled wouldn't get a 1K much attention, or sympathy from most agents either.

Actually, once I was informed that the flight that I was trying to stand by for had international connecting passengers that needed to get out asap, I would have headed to the UC bar!

A number of times over the years I've turned on the wireless after landing on a delayed flight and gotten a text message automatically rebooking us on another flight. Is that still happening?

Last May we sat on a plane at LHR for nearly eight hours before being de-boarded and there was nothing like that. I put it down to being outside the U.S. but subsequently we encountered a UEx cancellation at IAD and were lucky to sort it out eventually with several phone calls.