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Flight morning 9 June 2019 from ATL ... help!
We’re scheduled to leave tomorrow morning out of ATL for IAD, flight 778 at 9:45 am. We are connecting at IAD for a flight to Beijing (flight 807) scheduled to leave at 12:55. We will have an hour and a half between flights. The weather in Atlanta has been turbulent today and likely tomorrow with scattered thunderstorms. Today the same flight from ATL was delayed three hours due to the FAA weather restrictions. If this happens tomorrow we will miss our flight to Beijing. There’s an earlier flight that leaves ATL at 5:25 am but when I called United it would be $1000 to change the flight for my family of four. 😳 There are no travel waivers in effect right now and I don’t know if there will be. 🤷🏻.♀️ Suggestions on what we should do??? |
What happened yesterday may or may not be indicative of tomorrow.
If you do have a flight disruption, UA is responsible to get you an alternative routing to PEK. Assuming you are on a single PNR / ticket. You can try another agent but until UA posts a waiver you are likely to get the same answer. Keep checking for the waiver. |
You could also do a same day change. Once you are within 24 hours you can do same day change for less or free depending on your status. Load on the 5am flight looks like you should be able to get it as a standby. |
Yes we are all booked on a single ticket that was booked through the airline, not a third party. So at least I did one thing right. 😂
I’m also wondering if there’s any benefit to getting to the airport at 4:00 am in the hopes of them letting us on the early flight? |
Well the counter doesn't open until 4:30am... so don't go too crazy. Best of luck.
https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...nters/usa.html |
Originally Posted by GLewis
(Post 31182909)
I’m also wondering if there’s any benefit to getting to the airport at 4:00 am in the hopes of them letting us on the early flight?
Good luck! |
UA also has non-stop's to PEK from ORD, EWR, and SFO. There's an 8:00 AM flight to ORD that would work well for the ORD-PEK flight. If weather is bad and flights start getting delayed tomorrow morning, you might want to consider asking about getting switched to the ORD routing.
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If an agent can't be convinced to just make the change, SDC alone is not good enough as that simply drops the change fee to $75 or less. But, if the fare bucket is not available, the fare difference may be assessed as well.
In addition to the above other routings, I would also consider flying into IAD tonight and spending the night at one of the IAD area hotels. On Saturday evening, there may be better availability in lower fare buckets. |
picking up my wife at ATL this afternoon..weather has been pushing thru quickly... check the weather later tonight for whats in store tomorrow..
I think you will be fine... but I am not a weather man or do I have connections with United... sorry |
Watch the flight status page and keep checking “where is this aircraft coming from”. Although planes can change, it only had two more hops. It’s in flight to SFO and then does SFO-ORD and overnights there before doing ORD-ATL in the morning. It it departs ORD on time and is showing a planned arrival on tine as well I’d relax a bit. You never know if a storm will roll through, but a plane on the ground at the gate is a good thing. But. I just checked the weather forecast. It is very stormy for tomorrow. If IAD goes south on you, the best option seems to be a 10:45 departure connecting in ORD. There are later options but they all arrive on the 11th, not the 10th. There is a Delta non-stop at 2:02, but UA won’t do that willingly. Bottom line. Watch that ORD-ATL flights status in the morning and if that starts to slip be proactive and call UA with your concern. Don’t wait for them to contact you. |
Originally Posted by n9536j
(Post 31182908)
Load on the 5am flight looks like you should be able to get it as a standby. OP, United is responsible for getting you to Beijing. I would start now looking at alternatives and being prepared to discuss specific rebookings in case things go south. (e.g. connecting in ORD, SFO, two stops...) One option that they may not think about immediately is Air Canada. If they can't get you there Monday and need to get you there Tuesday, Lufthansa might be the better option. But decide what you are willing to do ahead of time. |
What status are you? I think that is important to determining what is feasible. If there is a chance for potential weather troubles, do the change (if you can). Granted, I was traveling midweek for business, but I saw that Houston was forecasted to have bad weather - so I switched my STL-IAH-MEM to STL-DEN-MEM, even though it made little sense geographically and I had to wake up 2 hours earlier than planned. As a 1K, it was a piece of cake, even if the phone agent told me I was doing a 'custom routing' (sure wasn't the case with Google Flights). Do what you can to make sure you get to your destination on time.
That said, have fun in Beijing in the summer :D |
Originally Posted by Often1
(Post 31183212)
If an agent can't be convinced to just make the change, SDC alone is not good enough as that simply drops the change fee to $75 or less. But, if the fare bucket is not available, the fare difference may be assessed as well.
In addition to the above other routings, I would also consider flying into IAD tonight and spending the night at one of the IAD area hotels. On Saturday evening, there may be better availability in lower fare buckets. |
If this link works, here are all the *alliance flights tomorrow. I limited to *. The flights that say +2 don’t arrive until Tuesday. Several options are around your original time, very few much later so the quicker you can act if you need to the better. I’ve had my best luck when prepared with options I can feed to the agent .”... I see a flight on AC via Toronto, can you check that...” and if all else fails suggest the 2:02 Delta. Never hurts to ask. https://www.google.com/flights#flt=A...;sd:1;t:f;tt:o |
I have no status ... rarely need to fly. So unfortunately that won’t help me here.
Originally Posted by fotographer
(Post 31183245)
picking up my wife at ATL this afternoon..weather has been pushing thru quickly... check the weather later tonight for whats in store tomorrow..
I think you will be fine... but I am not a weather man or do I have connections with United... sorry
Originally Posted by PsiFighter37
(Post 31183493)
What status are you? I think that is important to determining what is feasible. If there is a chance for potential weather troubles, do the change (if you can). Granted, I was traveling midweek for business, but I saw that Houston was forecasted to have bad weather - so I switched my STL-IAH-MEM to STL-DEN-MEM, even though it made little sense geographically and I had to wake up 2 hours earlier than planned. As a 1K, it was a piece of cake, even if the phone agent told me I was doing a 'custom routing' (sure wasn't the case with Google Flights). Do what you can to make sure you get to your destination on time.
That said, have fun in Beijing in the summer :D |
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