world_fly

I booked a flight from ICT to DEN on Jan 10, that was bizarrely canceled on Jan 7th (3 days before flight), for the following reason (as stated on the flight status page):

United Flight 4709

Operated by Trans States Airlines dba United Express
Status: Your flight is canceled because of local government restrictions at your destination that prevented flights from taking off or landing. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

The UA agents I spoke with had no idea what this. Has anyone seen this type of reason for cancellation before?

I only got an email notification, and no calls or other follow up to ensure I got the message. Had I not diligently checked my email, I would have been really inconvenienced when I showed up for my flight on Jan 10th.

Very disappointed in UA's lack of customer service in pro-actively letting me know other than a single system generated email.

HNLbasedFlyer

Seems clear to me - what more do you need to know?

avi8tir

Seems like par for the course.

clubord

TerryK

Great service by UA.^ I much prefer emails, which I can check any time, than phone calls. DL annoys me to no end by using automated calls for flight delays. I wish I could switch calls to emails.

mozilla

Operation of this flight was transferred to Gojet under flight number UA3372, same flight hours. They didn't rebook you on that one?

emcampbe

mozilla

Well, looks like they didn't rebook the pax and it will be a quiet flight. With only 8 seats filled, the 3372 seat map looks awkwardly empty for a flight that is scheduled for tomorrow.

The replacement flight was only loaded in the system yesterday Jan 8 at 5:55P CST. If the original flight was already canceled on Jan 7 as OP said, it might be that the computer rebooked the affected itineraries on other flights because the replacement was not yet loaded/bookable.

Those 8 probably noticed the appearance of the replacement and asked to be rebooked.

Edit: weirdly enough, I can still display the seat map of the canceled 4709 flight, which shows ~80% seats occupied. Now I wish I was at ICT tomorrow to witness how this would all play out

txaggiemiles

BThumme

On a similar note, a couple days ago I was looking at DEN-LAX. There was a flight cancelled for a 310pm departure. There was also a 310 pm departure that left on time, different flight number. When I went to the 310 cancelled flight, it said something like "the inbound could not arrive here and was cancelled, all passengers have been rebooked on UA(whatever) at the same time." That was mainline-mainline, not UAx1-UAx2, so at least there is some record of UA being able to do that (assuming the timelines allow for it).

world_fly

A singular random email is not great service, imho.

They should have texted as well. In addition, I also have the UA app, and it gave no notification or indication the flight was canceled, as one would expect the travel app to give some sort of clue that there is an issue with the flight, especially a cancellation. When I looked at the app last night, the reservation looked normal with no indication of any issues.

This is bizarre. The email notification had a link for me to choose alternate flights and when I clicked on it yesterday it gave no option to take this replacement flight whatsoever.

I spoke to UA customer service directly twice last night, and both times neither agent was aware of this replacement flight, as they only offered an earlier flight in the day (which does not work for me). I also had my travel agent call United last night as well, and whomever (at United) the travel agent spoke with also was not aware of this replacement flight. I ended up canceling my flight and getting a refund and had to rebook on a different airline.

The replacement flight also did not show up last night when I was considering alternative travel options, but it does show up this morning.

Not just once, but three times (twice with direct call by me, and once by my travel agent)...very strange indeed. Why cancel the original flight and replace it with a different flight number? I'm mystified.

Sarcastic?

What do you mean by seems clear to you?

I've never seen this type of cancellation reason, ever, nor the agents I spoke with.

jsloan

Because it's being operated by a different airline.

All airlines publish a table mapping that maps between their flight numbers and the operating airline for all codeshare flights. If the operating airline changes, the original flight gets cancelled and is replaced by a new flight with a flight number in the correct range for the new operator. Typically, this happens in short order and passengers are moved from the original flight to the replacement with a minimum of fuss. It seems that process fell apart this time.

You'll find the same thing happened for a corresponding inbound flight.

emcampbe

mozilla

I'm not sure if the cancelation properly propagated through the system, which could be a reason why you are not getting notifications or the app still shows the flight.

UA status shows flight canceled.
FlightStats has Scheduled/On Time, which is also the flight status data source of Google
OAG shows flight canceled
AC is codesharing UA4709 as AC4202, shows flight Scheduled/On Time (and AC4202 didn't migrate over to the UA3372 flight as far as I can see)
ExpertFlyer shows flight canceled, but is able to pull up seat map and shows many occupied seats

I don't know what "night" means here, but the replacement flight was loaded in the system at 5:55P CST yesterday. It may have taken additional time for the new record to propagate to all UA's systems.

world_fly

What do you mean by a different airline? It's TRANS STATES AIRLINES DBA UNITED EXPRESS which is the same operator for the original flight and now the new flight. Only the aircraft seems to have changed (Embraer RJ135 to CRJ700) and the flight number.