laxff03

Agreed mostly.

I don't understand the feeling of "[insert group] is more entitled to that upgrade than you are." People think they should move Silvers into the E+ seats and giving the family the other seats? Why, cause it's >24 hours out and they haven't had a chance to claim what they think they should be entitled to?

United doesn't insist that a T fare be available on a new flight if my original T fare was canx due to IRROPS/MX/etc. They give me a seat even if they could have sold an M seat on it later. Can you imagine if a flight didn't work out, and you got told "well sir, your seat is a very restricted fare class that you have to buy 21 days out. So we can fly you in three weeks, or you can pay $xxx for the privilege of flying tomorrow?" I get there are differences in my analogy (please don't point out that E+ seats are better, I get it, trust me).

I will depart for my sympathy for OP in the sense that I would never expect the system to auto-recognize this and give him the E+ seats for free. I would expect it to give him middle seats like it did, or even not assign a seat. So yes, I expect you need to call. I expect the CSR to put at least two seats together. If the best way to do that is to give E+ I expect them to do that.

The only way I would hope for the call to end without OP and his child together on 2 seats is if legitimately they could not do so without unassigning someone a seat. The OP shouldn't have to stress about this at the airport unless absolutely necessary.

/rant.

joshwex90

Except you have a GA posting upthread that it's not a foregone conclusion that that will work out...

JBord

I think you've read too much into that post. It came from a GA, who wants to make it clear that a GA is not all-powerful, and there's a chance that it will have to be sorted out on the plane if the GA is unable to resolve the issue.

IRROPS happen all the time, families get separated all the time. I have never once heard a report of a baby sitting apart from it's parents. I'm sure that story would be all over the place if it ever happened.

You need to read between the lines on this story. The OP is clearly not telling us everything. He's been asked several times to fill in some missing details, and hasn't done so, even though he's posted after those questions were posed several times. His solution to IRROPS splitting his seats was to buy an E+ subscription.

IMO, the baby and the seat split were convenient reasons to try to get free E+ seats. I may be wrong. But in any case, this seems to have very little to do with the baby sitting apart from parents, since that problem was resolved for the OP, and the vast experience of frequent fliers suggests that scenario is next to impossible.

fastair

I would say it will work out most of the time, my point is that not always does it work out at any one point. People suggested that the res agent should have told him it would work out at t-24 hours...maybe it would then, maybe it wouldn't. Then at the gate, a high probability it would work out, but not so certain that an agent should tell the OP it would be fixed there. I would say with 98% certainty somewhere along the way, it would work out, for at least 2 seats, either from t-24 till at the gate, at the gate prior to boarding from misconnects or those that get upgraded or those than just never show, or upon boarding with the help of the flight attendants, but I cringe whenever a coworker states that someone else will be able to fix it when they can't. It's like people asking me if the flight will cncl or be delayed. All I can promise is that right now, it isn't cncld or delayed, the future variables unknown to me cannot be guaranteed and to make promises that something will or will not happen eventually, those promises will be wrong. I think JBORD summed up my point pretty well.

zrs70

I haven't read this thread, and my comment will come across as uncharacteristicly cold.

But...

United isn't a charity or a social service provider.

It's a business, and its goal is to make money.

Is there room for compassion? Of course.

joshwex90

Is this reply based on the title only or the OP as well?

Mbcijim10

Wow am I taking a pounding.

I see no reason that UA can't program their computers to upgrade their *Silvers and put families, together, in regular old Y. Or give us 2 seats together in Y+. I don't care what the solution is just don't ask me to solve it. That's my beef is that you all think the burden should be on me, the customer, whether IRROPS or not, to find 2 seats together. I vehemently disagree that it's my job to fix their problem. I shouldn't have to log on a T-24 and hope to find *Silvers left me with two seats together. And what if I log on at T-22 instead and find all the non-elites moved to window & aisles seats? Then once again the customer is left holding the bag.

If that is truly how UA feels then they should stop selling tickets to families. They elect to sell tickets to 15 month old customers, heck they even give him a frequent flyer number. To argue that the customer needs to find two seats together in order to fly, when UA could've simply programmed their computers differently is just ludicrous. Would you like me to carry my checked bag out to the plane and clean the plane afterwards too?

I will say every single UA agent we talked to was sympathetic, all of them tried to help. I'm not dissing the employees, just UA's systems.

Not that this has much to do with the topic at hand, other than to prove that I wasn't looking for something for free, is my E+ subscription. We fly across the country a lot. My son had done it at least 9 times so far. Because many of our tickets are bought on points none of us has status. We often book a ticket 2-3 days before we fly. At that time the only tickets left together are E+. So for 3 people and 2 flights each direction (no direct flights where we fly) it would usually cost me $300-500 in each direction in that situation to get 3 seats together. So with one family trip I have most of the E+ subscription paid for. I will most likely earn status this year so it shouldn't be an issue in 2017.

Mbcijim10

This makes no sense at all. We're talking about a 15 month old toddler. That had a seat with his mom, the flight was cancelled, seats in Y+ were together on the new flight (but not Y), but UA chose to give a toddler the middle seat between two strangers. UA said pay me $200 so your toddler and mother can sit together. They didn't offer a different flight, the only option they gave me was to pay for an upgrade. Your analogy has nothing at all to do with the child's safety. Had UA at least offered a different flight for free, maybe what you say would make sense. UA wanted more $$$ plain and simple.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

You ended up with a parent sitting next to the child in E-. It's pretty obvious that your main objective was to get free E+. Your chances of being separated on any particular flight are actually pretty small, but you opted for an E+ subscription instead of buying E+ on the very rare occasion that you're actually separated. You're twisting the narrative to act as if the child was stranded by himself in a middle seat at departure. That was not the case. "UA said pay me $200 so your toddler and mother can sit together." Who sat next to the child? You? You could have switched with the child's mother for zero dollars.

geo979

These rants about what families with children are "entitled to" will likely increase over time now that United foolishly granted families with small children boarding group 1 priority. So United can take some (not all, of course) of the blame for the DYKWIA attitudes of parents with small children and the resulting hassles it will bring on United.

LarryJ

Which other airlines do as you suggest United should do in situations such as yours?

Mbcijim10

Yes, except this is what I said:

I was tempted to notify mods for the personal attack, but let's go there. I guess UA should add a Miserable Old Business Traveler Who Can't Afford To Buy F (MOBTWCATBF) premier level too.

Mbcijim10

I have no idea. Do you?

IAH-OIL-TRASH

I buy F when need be, and would certainly buy E+ if I had to. .

Mbcijim10

I think you all seem to be misunderstanding my post. UA's employees were 100% sympathetic to our plight. I have nothing but good things to say about them in this case.

UA had a choice, to program their computers with a solution - it would either cost them a few hundred dollars in revenue to give up E+ tickets, give low level elites a free upgrade, or they seat a family with a toddler not together. In the latter, their is still a cost to UA being that it my case it was 4-5 interactions with employees to get seats together plus their is no way to win the PR battle. Plain and simple they assigned a 15 month old a ticket between two strangers. On FT you might have a few MOBTWCATBF defend UA but in Facebook, TV, news, they will never, ever give it that spin. You don't need to be a PR expert to realize this.

I'm in sales, and I don't EVER ask my customers to solve MY companies problems. I am utterly shocked of the choice that ultimately UA made, it seems ridiculous. Now that it has been vetted some, the UA management should pick solution B, in that upgrade the *Silvers, that policy makes the most sense, at the least cost to UA.

Please go ahead and resume your regularly scheduled attacking of DYKWIA.