Amil

So I booked a J Award flight using Aeroplan to go from BUR-SFO (UA) SFO-IST (Turkish) for my father and brother to fly out today and a lot of things went wrong and im still confused as to who messed up what went wrong and what can be done next time if there is a next time.

Their initial flight from Burbank was supposed to take off at 1:40 but due to weather the ticketing agent at United told them they their flight was heavily delayed and they might miss their connection so he instructed them to go to LAX (on their own dime) and that he would book them on a J ticket direct from LAX today. My father and brother were kinda happier with the change and decided to just go with it. They got a ride to LAX went to the Turkish counter and they started to tell them that they have no business seats left (lie) and that their ticket reservation wasn't coming up on the system. My father and brother ( who don't know much about award tickets and how they work) call me and I tell them to call Aeroplan to see whats going on. Aeroplan shows that they have ticket a number and tells my parents to go to United to get it sorted. Turkish Airlines ends up admitting that they have Business Class seats open and as soon as they fix the reservation they will ticket them on that flight. At this point I was pretty close to LAX so I decided to meet them at the United counter to help them with the rest of the way if they needed my help. They walk over from Bradley to Terminal 7 (my father is almost 71 years old) and the ticket agent tells them their reservation is good and they should have no problems going to Turkish. I advised him that if he hasnt changed anything it's really pointless because they made my father walk over once so he calls Turkish Airlines himself. As he's on hold for over 30 minutes the ticketing agent and myself advised my brother to go to the Turkish counter and see if the ticket number will work.

Ticket Agent from United seems to have some serious problems with Turkish on the phone, they keep saying the confirmation number is there but the reservation is missing and they will not ticket them. My brother gets back to the Turkish Counter and the person in front of him purchased an upgrade and when it became my brothers turn they tell him that first off they only have one business seat left and that the reservation still wasn't popping up on the system. The UA agent at the same time is on phone with Turkish Miles Department gets frustrated with them and takes my brother and father off the flight and says I will book you guys from LAX-LHR LHR-IST. We wanted to get upset that everything was disorganized but I have no idea who is really messing up so my father decides its ok to take the flight. He then tells us that LHR-IST is in coach and its such a quick flight it shouldn't be a problem. I start to get a bit upset and tell them they were booked on J have been following everything from United. Their is a Swiss Air Flight to ZRH theres a LH flight to MUC he should somehow figure out a way to get them there on the correct class. He makes a phone call and tells me that he's able to put them on the LAX-LHR( UA) on business and the LHR-IST(Turkish) on business and ends up booking it. The tickets get printed out and its in economy for the LAX-LHR segment and after I pointed it out he then tells me they are number 1 and 2 on the waiting list and they will clear. Honestly, they have been given the run around so many times with so many airlines that I asked him nicely twice to just push the waiting list and print them the business. I cant think of one reason why it would need to go through the list and for god knows what reason a VIP comes and bumps them off. He does this and now the LHR-IST ticket comes out as well and the ticket comes out and just says Seat 242 for the first ticket and 243 for the second ticket.I have no idea if its actually business or not but he promises it is and they board their LAX flight eventually.

1) Did we do something wrong?
2) Who's fault is it?
3) When my father and brother get to London are they going to find out they are actually in Coach?
a) if they are booked in coach is this something I can fix now before they get there?
4) Kind of a long shot but does EC 261 even apply here?


Sorry for a bunch of run on sentences and a long rant and if i posted in the wrong forum but I think since it was United who was handling everything maybe its the United forum.

jsloan

1) On the day of travel, you need to deal with the carrier who caused the delay (UA). Calling Aeroplan likely didn't help (although it probably didn't do any harm either, except to waste some of your time).
2) It's UA's responsibility to get the ticket pushed across properly to TK, although based on your description, it sounds like the TK staff weren't being the least bit helpful. Getting UA and TK talking to each other was the right move. However, UA can't force TK to accept an award ticket. (UA could offer to pay for the ticket, of course, but that seems unlikely). The fact that the TK people started calling their award desk is a red flag -- it may be that UA tried to rebook into positive space* and TK refused to accept it because it's an award ticket. With the ticket number, the TK agents should have been able to pull up the ticket and shown you its status. If it was "Exch./Reissued," then UA didn't complete the transfer process and you'd want to ask them to force it through again. If it said "Open" or "Airport Control," they should have been able to update their reservation system to let them on board.
3 & 3a) No idea; you could call TK to ask, but I can't promise you'd get anywhere with them.
4) EU.261 probably doesn't apply unless you can show that you had a confirmed reservation with TK and they denied your family boarding. Frankly, that sounds like a long shot; if UA didn't push the ticket over properly, TK would have had no obligation to accept them.

* "positive space" = any seat on the airplane, ignoring inventory requirements. Generally, award tickets can't be rebooked into positive space on partner airlines.

Amil

Thank you so much for the response. I called Turkish and they confirmed their LHR-IST leg is in Business they just don't have a seat number yet. I definitely feel much better just writing it out and finding out who's at fault !

TPJ

UA created this mess.

They should have rebooked BUR-SFO-IST into LAX-IST (in 'I' inventory) and then have the tickets exchanged for LAX-IST. They could do this as the day-of-departure *A endorsement waiver applies also to award tickets.

TK didn't necessarily lie to you - 'I' inventory might be not available when you asked, even when 2 seats (in revenue inventories like 'C' or 'D') could have been available.

jsloan

Right, and that's the problem. If the UA agent attempted to book into positive space (C, D, etc.), but there wasn't I space available, then TK would be within their rights to refuse to accept the ticket from UA, endorsement waiver or not. (Incidentally, I can't find any documentation of there being an endorsement wavier for award tickets -- the only thing I find are FlyerTalk posts about a waiver on full-fare tickets, which are an entirely different beast).

laxmillenial

What if "I" inventory doesn't exist? UA cannot force partners to open "I" inventory, correct? So are you left with 'whatever is left in I"? What if there's no I space left, then what can you 'ask' for?

jsloan

You can ask UA to request that the partner open I space. You can ask UA to open space on their own metal to any gateway if there is I space from there (which is what it sounds like happened eventually). You can ask for a refund.

You can ask that they accommodate you in a non-award class. They're likely to say 'no,' but you can ask. If it's a mechanical delay instead of weather, it's more likely that they'll say yes. The operating carrier still has to agree, though.

TPJ

It is clearly stated on *A Employee Portal - no password required to visit. Google it out or I will publish a link when I reach the office - I have it bookmarked in my laptop (I am Europe-based, so it will be in 2 hours).

jsloan

Thanks. Here's a link to the employee reference guide: https://portal.staralliance.com/empl...eference-guide

Here's the specific policy (from page 70-71):

Translating to plain English: when there's a delay or cancellation, Star Alliance airlines agree to accept each other's tickets without the issuing (aka validating) carrier needing to perform a specific endorsement. (With paper tickets, lacking an endorsement waiver, you'd have to get someone from the validating carrier to, well, validate the ticket -- put a stamp on it saying, in essence, "yes, it was paid for, we'll honor it when you present it to us, and we authorize it to be used on another airline.") However, this doesn't obligate TK to accept award tickets when they don't have award inventory; just that if they do have award inventory, they don't need Aeroplan's stamp of approval to reissue that ticket and place a passenger into it.

chuck1

I'm confused - can't on day of departure UA rebook them on TK in J/C/D and reissue the e-ticket.
They then go to TK and check in without problems?
Why should TK care as long as the ticket is properly reissued and synched?
Doesn't a properly reissued ticket indicate UA promises to pay TK the proper rate for however it was reissued?

jsloan

UA can do that, but -- on an award ticket -- generally won't, especially for a weather delay. Without being able to look over the TK agents' shoulders, we're all guessing here, but it doesn't seem like UA did this. Either the agent tried to do this and didn't endorse and push the ticket through properly, or the agent didn't try to do this and believed TK would be able to do it on their own. It's also possible that the agent had issues because it was originally an Aeroplan ticket, which meant that the UA agent needed to exchange that into an I-class 016 ticket (endorsement waiver), then re-issue it into a paid fare class, so that UA would be on the hook for the extra compensation to TK, not Aeroplan / AC.

The endorsement waiver that TPJ mentioned would have allowed TK to reissue the ticket themselves into award space, for ultimate compensation using the award booking rate. However, TK is not allowed to reissue the ticket themselves into an non-award fare class, since the compensation rates for those are considerably higher than for award tickets.

zrs70

Didn’t the op say these were aeroplan tickets? What is UA’s responsibility here?

jsloan

Yes, OP said they were Aeroplan tickets. However, UA has responsibility on the day of travel as the late-delivering carrier; it was the delay on the BUR-SFO flight that set everything else into motion.

Also, UA would have been responsible for meals and hotel for the passengers under the Star Alliance IRROPS policy, also listed in the guide linked in my earlier post. This is not true in general, but it is true because they were premium cabin (or *G) passengers on an intercontinental flight.

That reminds me: OP, due to that *A policy, I'm pretty sure UA was responsible for the ride to LAX. If they took paid transportation, they should write in for reimbursement under the Star Alliance Irregular Operations Handling policy for uncontrollable delays for premium customers on intercontinental journeys, page 152-153 of the 2017-18 Star Alliance Employee Reference Guide.

rankourabu

Everything. This was their delay. They are to rebook the flyer (properly) because its their delay. Whether that be at BUR or when the OP eventually got to SFO and missed their flight.

Lesson: Never leave the counter without a new ticket number. A reservation is never enough.

RobOnLI

I'm not sure what OP means by "waitlist" for business on LHR-IST. You can't be waitlisted on an award segment on TK to my knowledge. So I'm glad the OP pushed UA to force the "waitlist" immediately while still at LAX. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure OP's family would have wound up in coach on that segment.

242 and 243 were the sequence numbers for that flight for OP's family. Someone on there should/would have been printed "See Agent" or something like that to get seat assignments in LHR.

-RM