AceAirspeed

I am wondering if there is a specific policy regarding the order in which passengers are downgraded in the event of an oversold F cabin?

Here's my situation from this weekend:

• 4 pax on one PNR (2 1Ks, 2 GMs) booked with miles from 1K account.
• Confirmed in F class with seat assignments and boarding passes.
• 5 minutes before boarding one of us is paged and told we are first on the list to be downgraded.
• Got the $500 downgrade compensation and a decent seat bulkhead aisle seat, so not horrible.
• Gate Agent was nice even though I was being pretty hard on her. She even talked to the FA to make sure our one pax in Y was taken care of. She got free drinks and even a comp BOB.

Does the downgrade list go purely by status? The UA App showed 6 passengers had cleared an upgrade on that flight - so shouldn't one of them be downgraded before a paying passenger (paying with miles or dollars) is downgraded?

DeaconFlyer

Its not published anywhere officially.

Where was the downgraded passenger seated? They could have been unseated by a FAM.

Did you receive a mileage refund?

WineCountryUA

For IDB, it is and award tickets are below all paid fare classes including upgraders.

This may have been what was used in your case.

AceAirspeed

Row 1 window seat (next to me) and was def not a FAM.

Calling to get mileage refund now.

channa

The procedure (which is seldom followed, IME), is they're supposed to solicit for volunteers to downgrade for a refund in upgrade method + the voucher.

If no volunteers, then downgrade in reverse upgrade order. An F award ticket is considered a paid F ticket. They are supposed to downgrade an upgrader first before downgrading a paid F ticket. If there were no upgraders, then yours would be the lowest paid F ticket, presumably.

So, based on the information provided (that there were upgraders), it appears that this downgrade situation, like most other UA downgrade situations, was mishandled.

At least you got the voucher, though. IME, they usually don't know about the voucher and you have to push for it.

AceAirspeed

It seems like if there are CPU upgraders, they should be downgraded first (with the last upgraded the first to be downgraded). Only when that list is exhausted should they go to the folks who booked in that cabin with miles or dollars. Or is that too logical? Or maybe not oversell the F cabin so frequently...

rob_flies_ua

There's what should happen, and whatever the station decides will happen. Those two scenarios might or might not have the same end result.

WineCountryUA

I quoted the Carriage of Contract (for IDB)

Additionally do you know if the upgraders were CPU? or YBM or GPU or RPU .....
BTW I agree the CPU upgrades should be reversed.

How frequently have you encountered a domestic F cabin oversell if you think it is too frequent?

channa

That is the correct procedure.

AceAirspeed

I don't know - there were 6 on the list showing as cleared but I have no idea how they got on the list.

As far as how many are too many - 1 is too many if it happens to me! Seems like they have increased post-merger but I don't have any data to back it up.

Kacee

I'm not sure that oversells of F are a frequent problem. My only downgrade in the past ten years was due to an equipment downgauge (320 => 319). Which I suspect is far and away the most frequent cause.

channa

It never happened to me pre-merger, but post-3/3/2012, I've been downgraded maybe 4-5 times, and have heard about my flight having oversold F many more than that.

I think the main factor we didn't have pre-3/3/2012 is SHARES incorrectly dropping people's returns after their outbounds get changed, necessitating them having to be reinstated. If someone was in F, they get reinstated in F, simple as that.

I remember one last year, and the GA was nervous about the flight because they were already oversold and they had to reinstate a GS into an already full F cabin because SHARES dropped his return after an outbound IRROP. She was afraid that she'd have to IDB this GS, and they were begging for a volunteer from F not to downgrade, but to take another flight (VDB).

I was on an F ticket, I bit, and they rerouted me on another carrier in F. Not all things are bad about SHARES, it sometimes works out in your favor.

goalie

Bolding mine: Which imho, I find very hard to believe given that one can upgrade with miles, certs, CPU's and of course ToD$ , there wasn't at least one upgrader and yes, imho, also mishandled

WineCountryUA

I think it is rash to assume this was mishandled -- it may have been, it may have not. This is missing information, a number of assumptions but the GG OVS DOWNGRADE compensation was provided. Other on-board compensation was done. The miles may or may not be due -- need to see the full itin to determine.

Sure it is fun to trash UA and the oversell should not happen but the recovery may be fully legit.

TennisNoob

Wow I thought UA never over-sold plane tickets because they have seat assignment. I thought only foreign carriers did that. Downgraded 4-5 times? You must fly a lot!!!