*A Award Flight cancelled and forced to take Delta
 

On the morning of July 25th, I was sitting in Greece, having my morning coffee and checking my email when Kayak emailed me to say 'You should check with your airline, your flight may be cancelled'. The next morning I was supposed to fly back home to NY on Austrian Airlines (ATH->VIE->JFK)... a business saver ticket I purchased via united.com.

I was already checked in with seats assigned, and I never got an email from United nor Austrian. When I called up Austrian's counter in ATH, he first told me that my tickets were fine, then I asked him to check again and he said 'oh, yes, you flight is cancelled'. They ended up rebooking me on a Delta business class flight (ATH->JFK) which was nice because it was non-stop BUT their flight sucks... its an old plane and the business class seats are not even close to the Austrian seats that I was expecting.

I have written United to complain, but they came back with a canned response that they can do nothing... I think that is unacceptable but thought I'd ask what others think... should I expect some compensation for the change?

I've never liked Delta and wouldn't have taken the flight if I had a another option.

Your beef is with Austrian...not United.

Did you ask for something besides the Delta flight? I would imagine that there were many one-stop *A options that they could have put you on. It's not really United's fault here...

You should complain to Austrian IMHO. I had non-functioning IFE on a UA reward ticket in LH F and LH sent me 10k miles.

It's a stretch to hold United Airlines, which in this case was nothing more than your travel agent, accountable for Austrian's operations. If you feel like you were wronged by Austrian, I would pursue your complaint with them.

Exactly. Austrian was the operating carrier so this was entirely outside United's control.

OMG, a cancel, they rebook you in J, same day, nonstop no less, and you're complaining???

This is like the third thread in as many days suggesting that UA is somehow responsible for cancellation of a partner operated flight. What gives?

You ultimately got a DeltaOne longhaul award flight for low miles. Be grateful. At least you didn't have to fly UA.

I wasn't sure if I should go to Austrian since I 'paid' United... I figured they were the first stop.

And this 'DeltaOne' service is nothing compared to the flight to Greece on Lufthansa or my previous business class trips on TK.

(I might also have been in a bad mood because it showed up as a last minute, one-way, single booking on an international flight and therefore I was subject to "random" extra security questioning and swabbing)

Huh? LH has slanted business class seats even on the A380 versus DL's genuine flat beds. DL has 100% direct aisle access (1-2-1 except for 1-1 on the 747 upper deck) versus 2-2-2 on the A380 and the completely unacceptable 2-3-2 seating in business class on the LH 747 (and worse on some UA aircraft that seem to be 2-4-2).

I'm sorry that your trip didn't go as hoped for, but if you read some of the other threads in this forum like this one:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...r-hell-ii.html

you'll find many tales of woe that sound pretty bad in comparison to your experience.

I think you would find a lot of UA passengers from the past couple of months who would have felt quite blessed if they had been forced to fly Delta instead of United.

My LH flight was upstairs on the 747... I didn't have anybody next time me, but even if I did, I don't think they would have bothered me. Most important to me, there was storage for my items so that the food service didn't try putting my dinner down on top of my laptop like on DL (there was no place to put anything unless you went to the overhead). As far as flatness, they both felt just as flat, but LH was not as worn out.

Plenty of room on LH: [X]

verse cramped on DL: [X]

did you get home earlier?

I'd be happy with the non stop. But if you had an issue contact Austrian. Have you flown them in C? I wasn't a fan and I'm not a fan of LH. Think about it, you saved yourself the awful 3 hour Euro Business Class seat.

Kalinxta!!

+100

At least OP got a Tumi amenity kit. Other than that, I personally don't like the comfort of DL's J seat.

From reading your posts I had gotten the impression that perhaps you were on a Delta 767, which admittedly does have business seats that are rather tight. However from your picture it appears that you're in the A330 seat, which is relatively new and currently the benchmark for most airlines as far as business class is concerned (reverse herringbone)... Similar seats on other airlines (AA and Air France, for example) have been widely lauded for their design. I really fail to see how you can consider this worthy of a complaint versus any seat on LH or Austrian... Personally I think you got an upgrade.