cheaptom

Hi, this might be a newbie-ish question, but I wanted to ask more experience UA flyers about is the airline supposed to give you notice of equipment changes? Recently came back from my vacation FCO-EWR-LAX. On both of my flights, the equipment changed, leaving us with less than desirable seats for both flights. The second leg switched us from the 777-200 V 3 to the awful V4, As of a day before departure, everything showed my original seats. But upon online checkin, the seat numbers changed.

I don't mind the equipment changes, if they let me know in advance and give me a chance to choose seats other than what they foisted on me on the new plane. Seat 4K on the V4 was one of the worst J seats I ever had, and I'm so displeased with UA.

jsloan

Sure, they're supposed to, but they often don't, and there's no particular penalty for them not doing so.

ExpertFlyer offers airplane swap alerts as part of their paid service; otherwise, you just have to babysit your reservations, I'm afraid.

As they continue refurbishing their fleet, swaps are likely to be fairly commonplace.

emcampbe

Sounds like this was a last minute change. That happens, unfortunately, and with configurations changing, yeah, is a PITA, especially since they don't appear to properly manage how the seats convert from one configuration to another.

There's not much you can do, except to keep checking. There's a period up until about 2-3 months in advance (IIRC) where a change can happen, and then beyond that, it's usually mostly within 3 days of departure, as they assign specific ships to a flight, and then adjust as necessary for purposes of operating the network given any last minute maintenance issues, IRROPS and the like. Trust me, it's not really something they want to do either.

Think of it this way - would you prefer to have a canceled flight if the originally scheduled aircraft went MX the day of, leaving no plane to take you on, or a extremely late inbound leaving you with an hours delay, or a different sub-type that gets you in close to schedule. I'd suspect most people would want the latter.

TomMM

I've started to receive AC changes for my flights which I am assuming is due to enabling push notifications for the flights.

mduell

I'm unaware of any reason to say they're supposed to, and they certainly don't in any reliable or timely fashion.

username

My experience here: 3 777-200 Aircraft Type Swaps in 1 Day. I am exhausted...

3 out of the 4 times (one was 2 days prior), I got a text message. It is a pain as they are not perfect preserving the attribute of your seat. It is also kind of tough when you are overseas and not using your phone.

cheaptom

Yeah, I have EF alerts set up for departure time changes, but I've never bothered with the equipment change alerts. Guess what I'm doing right now !!

drewguy

I've received text messages notifying me of new seats, which has been my clue to log on ASAP to see what a mess they've made.

But, yeah, it's a problem OP. Reminds me, as a mostly intl traveler, of the transition to IPTE of 777s, where you'd swap a 2-5-2 map for 3-3-3 or vv (and 2-3-2 to 2-4-2 in J)

st530

Kind of an unusual situation, just got a notification that my flight (UA 1524 on Friday 3 September) has a seat change due to an aircraft swap. (In fact I got the same seat -- 21 B -- which is a Premium Plus seat although not sold as such on this flight.) The aircraft swap is from a 772 to a 773. The seat map shows the 60-seat F configuration but the upgrade list still shows only 50 seats available. (I assume this is because it can be swapped back to a 772?) What's interesting is the "Where is this aircraft coming from?" shows a 772 from HNL to IAH, not a 773, although the aircraft number is not the same as the aircraft number for the 773 showing on my flight. So a bit unclear to me what's going on.

The ironic thing is I really want to try to the PP seat for the first time, but if in fact there is a swap to a 773 I'll almost surely get upgraded and I don't know of any way to disable the automatic CPU option.

Kmxu

PP seats are similar to domestic FC seats except narrower (perhaps, a little bit firmer). I will take a Polaris seat over a PP any day, day or night. 😀😀

Repooc17

I am sure someone in a PP seat is more than willing to trade with you for your Polaris seat, after your CPU gets processed through.

st530

But of course, yet I'm willing to take the hit for purposes of FlyerTalk research (especially since it's only about 3 hours and I know it's just the same old in F).

I thought about that but I'm not very good at approaching strangers. We shall see!

Part Time Flyer

A couple months ago I scheduled a flight and the aircraft assigned to both To/From were 777's.
Just for the heck of it I checked my flights and United changed the aircraft to 787's both ways.
Not a big deal but, does United notify its passengers that the type of aircraft has changed?
Note: By changing aircraft my assigned seats also changed.
Had to change my seats on the updated aircraft.

Any answer is appreciated.
Thanks

IAH-OIL-TRASH

No, UA does not. I’m not sure many carriers do.

ContinentalFan

I only get a notification if they’ve changed my seat; otherwise, as stated above, it doesn’t happen.