milemonkey

Yesterday, I booked a paid flight at the end of February as a MP Gold. However, I will only be a MP Silver by the time the flights depart what baggage rules apply? Gold or Silver?

IADFlyer123

nope. As per the rules, you will get benefits of silver status as that will be your status when you fly. it's all dependent on status at time of flight.

emcampbe

The benefits that get applied are based on your status at the time of travel. Therefore, your bag limits will be the silver limit. You will be prioritized on the upgrade list based on your silver status, etc.

In cases where you're making a change and status would affect this, it will be the status at the time of the change. Assuming you've selected E+ seat assignments at booking, for example, they should stick, short of something like an aircraft swap. But trying to select an E+ seat (or changing to a different E+ seat) prior to checkin but after your status drops will result in a charge for it.

milemonkey

So this will apply even though my reservation states no fee?

Also, I understand that a Premier member's companion gets the same free bag, but only if on the same reservation. The problem is UA made us split the PNR when we used some miles from my wife's account to upgrade. Will they waive this?

Finally, since we are upgraded to First, do baggage fees even apply?

sbm12

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9930; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.1066 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

The email also states that status at time of travel is what matters IIRC.

As a first class passenger you get the F baggage alllowance anyways.

aacharya

Indeed the e-mail and the "baggage charge" on the reservations both indicate as such. I'm fascinated by folks who like to use "selective" reading, much as our politicians do.

milemonkey

I beg to differ. I just received my itinerary and receipt for confirmation and there is no disclaimer that baggage fees apply to status at time of flight.

aacharya

Nothing like this underneath where you waived bag fees are noted? In your case, since you are in F, your bags fees are zero, whereas if you were not in F, they'd be crossed-out and then denote zero.

First and second baggage service charges per traveler as listed below:
1st bag2nd bag Weight
Tue., Oct. 7, 2014 (EWR - Liberty) to (KTM) $0 $0 70.0 lbs (32 kgs)


Baggage check-in must occur with United or United Express, and you must have valid MileagePlus Premier® 1K® membership at time of check-in to qualify for waiver of service charges for up to three checked bags (within specified size and weight limits).

milemonkey

Maybe it's because I was upgraded?

mahasamatman

That's very surprising. Looking at a recent booking I made, I see this under the heading of Baggage allowance and charges for this itinerary.
What does your initial (pre-upgrade) receipt say?

lincolnjkc

I depends, based on my experience (mix of Y-uped Y/B, non-Y-uped Y/B, paid F/A for business, and "everything else" for pleasure) it seems to be
- If you're on a ticket that includes a baggage allowance as part of the fare (used to be full-fare Economy and First/BF -- but it looks like killed the full-fare Economy exception) it will show a $0 fee for the number of bags permitted unless you have status that trumps the fare allowance.

If you have status that trumps it will show the "actual" fee in strikethrough and then $0 with the notation that " [whatever] status must be valid, yadda, yadda"

When I jumped from silver to gold, it changed my already-upgraded/paid F reservations from just $0 / $0 to $0-strikethrough-$0 $0-strikethrough-$0, "Check up to 3 bags...gold status must be valid..." and my Y reservations from $25-strikethrough-$0 / $35 "Check 1 bag...silver status must be valid..." to $25-strikethrough-$0 / $35-strikethrough-$0 "Check up to 3 bags...status must be valid..."

Lincoln