WineCountryUA

Glad it worked out, this is definitively HUCA/agent shopping situation.

Note, if you end up OK on the original flight, make sure the protected flight is deleted or properly "ARUNK"
Proactive flight protection questions/experiences & importance of "ARUNK"

SS255

transportprof

I was on UA563 which was over 2 hours late due to mx last night. The helpful agent in the ORD United Club protected me on the next morning's ORD-YVR flight, UA287, in case 563 cancelled.
Today, I'm still getting gate change emails about the protected flight, which was put on my record following the last leg (563) when I looked at the PNR last night, just before boarding in ORD.

Will being a "no show" on the protected flight affect any post travel accounting with United, specifically:

Credit of mileage for the flights actually flown?
Redeposit of a RPU that didn't clear on the flight I actually took. Is there any chance it could have cleared on the protected flight?

StuckinITH

United has been very nice and protected me with a later flight if they thought that I would not make my flight. The agents on the phone requested that if I made my flight, I should inform the gate agent to remove me from the protected flight. Obviously, this is an indication that sometimes reservations get stuck and the agents know about it. Because if not why would they make that request.

WineCountryUA

When you no longer need the protection, ask an agent to remove the protected flight -- it will free up space for others.
The flight alerts will continue however since the flight alert list seems semi-static or infrequently updated.

Another reason for cleaning up the reservation is if the protection is not done correct (missing ARUNK code) there is a risk of downline flight cancellations. Suspect if you are getting protected, the agent knows enough to do this properly but always (IMO) best to clean up the record.

Should be no problem on flight credit, as UA has a record of what you flew, UA does not use the itin for flight credit.

If the flight did cancel, again call to convert the protected flight and then you can request the RPU, the agent should waiver the 24-hour rule.

docbert

"Protection" is a reservation on a flight, but one that no ticket has been issued for. It's a part of your PNR, but doesn't have a ticket number attached to it.

If you need to use the protection flight, the agent will re-issue the ticket, replacing your existing flight (which will not have been flown) with the new one.

Presuming that you don't need the flight, it's good practice as has been said above to cancel that reservation to free the itinerary in case someone else needs it.

If the reservation hasn't been canceled by shortly before flight time, it will be canceled because there is no ticket attached to it - and obviously you can't fly without a ticket. This should be transparent to the rest of the reservation (in much the same way that a waitlist or an upgrade segment being canceled has no impact on anything else) - but obviously there's always room for error, which is another reason why it's good practice to get an agent to cancel the extra segment once it's no longer needed. This is especially the case if something unusual happened during your travel, such as a return-to-gate, or even just a boarding/deboarding which can leave ticket coupons in unusual states.

Because you are holding the inventory for that flight, and in doing so stopping someone else from reserving it. If the flight is not full then the impact of that normally isn't significant - but given that we're almost certainly talking IRROPS of some form here, there's a real chance that seat will be wanted for someone else, so the sooner it's released the better for everyone.

RobOnLI

This is the reason why protection flights are listed after all valid flight segments in the itinerary. If you missed your original ORD-YVR flight you would still need help with your ticket to get on the flight you were protected on. Since a non-GA (e.g. phone rep or club rep) protected you then your protected flight isn't going to fall off the reservation automatically. GAs who protect you are usually better at doing this.

Let's say your ticket looked like this:
Segment 1: LGA-ORD
Segment 2: ORD-YVR
Segment 3: YVR-ORD
Segment 4: ORD-LGA

And since segment 1 was two hours late you got protected as: Segment 5: ORD-YVR

This allows a few things:
1. Keeps your original ORD-YVR in case you're able to make it.
2. Protects space on the following day ORD-YVR in case you need it
3. Ensures that if you make your original flight that all other flight segments don't cancel once you don't show up for your protected ORD-YVR flight. Because once you no-show for the next day's ORD-YVR all segments after that will cancel in your itinerary. Since it's listed at the bottom of the reservation your return YVR-ORD-LGA will remain in-tact. Only once in a great while will the computer system go totally haywire and cancel everything but that's usually when a protected segment gets put onto an itinerary in the wrong order.

The gate agent working the next day's ORD-YVR flight will see you booked on the flight and not checked in. They may remove the segment from your PNR if they realize it was a protection flight. They may also just do nothing with your reservation since they don't technically have to touch it. Once you aren't checked in by the cutoff time your seat will become available to a standby person anyway.

Crediting miles will not be an issue because the system knows which flights you actually took.

RPU not clearing on your original ORD-YVR will get it returned to your account. An RPU cannot be attached to multiple flights on different days, nor can it technically be applied within 24 hours of the flight. So if you missed your original ORD-YVR or just didn't clear the RPU it will be returned to you. It can't be applied to the following ORD-YVR.

Should you call UA and tell them you made the original flight so they can release the seat on the following day's ORD-YVR? Yeah, it's a nice-to-do but not a requirement.

PS: because you are technically booked on the next ORD-YVR flight you will get all alerts about that flight including delays. Only if the flight is dropped from your record will you stop receiving alerts.

-RM

transportprof

Thanks for all the informative replies. My ORD-YVR protection was for the last leg of my itinerary, so there were no downstream flights to be affected by my not needing it.

Now, it sounds like best practice would be to cancel the protection segment when boarding the actual flight, but I'm not sure that would have worked last night. They turned a late arriving 319 in <45 minutes at ORD last night, and we would have been out even quicker if catering had been as speedy. The agents were in no mood to do anything other than get people on board and belted into their seats as fast as possible.

We arrived at YVR after 12:30 a.m., and I was pretty wiped out by then. But next time I'll remember to call in and ask for the protection to be cancelled after arriving - if there isn't an opportunity to cancel the protection at the boarding gate.

WineCountryUA

I would wait until you have arrived. You never know for sure if you will need to protection, until you have actually arrived. Things can still go wrong after boarding.

transportprof

Excellent point. I've been on multiple UA flights that boarded (some even took off), but did not attain the destination. Protection stays until I am off the plane at the destination!

cfischer

Protecting pax still happening. My MIL (no status w/ UA, but using my miles) flying ZRH-ORD-BZN ... LX flight ZRH-ORD was 2 hrs late due to maintenance; no issue because she had a 3h30 connection in ORD, but before she landed I saw that UA added an extra segment the next morning. Great to see they were proactively monitoring a partner flight delay!

onthesam

Recieved protection as early as last month.

Was refused protection by 2 different phone agents today. Both were very explicit in saying I would need to cancel my original reservation to confirm the later flight. One even stated that UA no longer does protection. Decided not to HUCA a 2nd time.

cranky1K

docbert

On Friday one of my flights did a return-to-gate that put a 75 minute connection in Denver at risk.

The one later DEN-LAX flight had 5 seats left for booking, so I called and asked to be protected, and they stated that they would happily move me to the later flight, but that they had could not double-book me as they had to "preserve the integrity of the space". They did state that someone at the airport could do it, but that they could not over the phone. By the time it was clear that I was going to misconnect, the later flight was zero'ed out.

In the end I mis-connected and they auto-rerouted me DEN-SFO-LAX with a 6 hour overnight layover in SFO (12:30am arrive, 6:30am departure). Ended up overnighting in DEN at UA's expense instead.

About 2 months ago in a rolling MX delay situation I had no issues with getting them or protect me on a alter flight over the phone, so I don't know if things have changed, or it's just the usual "depends on the agent" situation...

QBK

Question for the experts. I'm going A-B-C today, and A-B is delayed indefinitely, so I got the 1K desk to protect me on a later B-D-C. But now my reservation is out of sync ==> my mobile boarding pass vanished and I can't get it back or check in again.

Two agents insist this is The Way It Has Always Been, and as soon as I have two segments in the same direction on the same day, I'll be irretrievably out of sync and the only way to fix it is to delete one segment.

I would have sworn that I've done this half a dozen times with no problems -- i.e., got protected, kept my mobile pass, no out-of-sync messages.

Am I crazy? Or are the agents missing something?

UPDATE: Clarification: I just discovered that the disappearance of my mobile BP is *not* related. That was because Ops hadn't updated the flight status, so the app thought it had departed 1 hour ago and hid my BP. They just posted the delay, and my BP came back (w00t). Still curious about the sync question, but I'm more willing to believe the agents now...