DELee

Ditto on not piling on the OP.

Have actually had an AA boarding pass disappear even _before_ boarding for a flight has begun. REALLY bad juju. And the GA didn't care to help.

David

halls120

Which is why, in addition to saving my electronic BP on Apple wallet, I always keep my paper BPs until after my trip and the mileage has been properly credited.

s0ssos

How is this a "good deed?" There is no boarding pass on OP's phone. Why didn't UA put the new one there?

And yes, this is different than the phone's battery dying. Because this is no fault of the OP. And I understand they have plugs apparently in many places where one can charge a phone.
Secondly, this is like how big tech corporations "deleted" people's bought books. No, just because they refunded the cost they paid doesn't mean that it is right.

Actually, I stand corrected. You are indeed correct. OP tries to help UA to not waste paper, and this is what UA does.

jsloan

Because the OP's reservation was out of sync. This would all have been cleared up if the OP had just managed to talk to somebody at United.

Heck, if the TSA guy would just have let OP through -- "look, I'm clearly on this flight; my phone's just messed up. Here's my earlier boarding pass. Look at that line; don't make me go through again." -- it would have been cleared up.

You're correct that the event itself isn't the OP's fault. The inability to resolve it efficiently is partly on the OP, though, IMO. (And, incidentally, while the OP walked back some of the original comments, you can still see them in the title: "ruined my trip." I suspect this conversation would be very different if the question had been posted as "why did this happen" rather than "what a disaster!").

The "good deed" comment was about trying to protect OP on another flight when they thought he might not make the original one. That is, indisputably, a good deed. The unintended consequences did not work out well, but, at its heart, this was someone at UA trying to take care of a Premier Silver member and it blowing up in their face.

s0ssos

How long does a valuable premier silver member have to wait to talk to someone at United?
Are you serious? So your solution is to tell TSA "trust me, I know I deserve to be in there". Maybe a decade ago, when times were different and everybody wasn't so paranoid.

The 'ol blame the customer. Yes, everybody agrees OP should have done a screen shot. Not trust devices so absolutely. But OP did. And I presume there is no pop-up warning on the UA app saying that you risk missing your flight if you don't take a screen shot of the boarding pass, given they have the risk to make it disappear from the app any time they wish.

As someone noted, OP would have made it if OP didn't get "protected". Plus, did UA do this for their benefit or OP's? Because they wanted to load other passengers onto the plane, and getting OP off would have been a wonderful coincidence?
I find it rare that UA does some "good deeds". Delta, on the other hand, did cap flights out of Florida when there was the hurricane, flew in bigger planes to fly people out. Even flew in that rescue flight to Puerto Rico.

HNLbasedFlyer

A few seconds.....

jsloan

I don't know; it's been a while since I've been Silver. But they do have access to the Premier line; just with a lower priority than a Gold would.

It's worth a try, anyway. TSA agents are human; you never know when you might catch someone on a good day.

You quoted the part where I said that the event itself wasn't the OP's fault in order to accuse me of blaming the customer?

Look, when something goes wrong, you can either find a way to fix it, or you can post later on a website about how you trip was ruined.

So... they took up confirmed inventory space on two flights at the same time, with the hope that the OP would happen to get stuck in security, and be using a mobile boarding pass, and not be able to resolve it in time to make the plane, so that they could free up some extra seats... on a flight that departed with 9 empty seats, putting him instead on a flight that went out full? Bravo, United, you get craftier all the time!

oreocookies

Not to join the chorus of "get a printed boarding pass" I also take screenshots of my mobile boarding passes just in case I fumble with the app.

bloodyeyeballs

Recently my iPhone X inexplicably bricked while I was out and about. You can google “iPhone X bricked” for all the possible solutions such as memory full, software update, etc, but it occurred to me that this could happen when traveling as well. My phone did recover after plugging it in to my laptop later.

Two lessons learned from this relevant to this discussion are to always have a paper backup and also I have since discovered that boarding passes are also on my Apple Watch wallet. I also have cell service on my Apple Watch and now realize that this is not the waste of money I thought it was in the event the phone dies, or is damaged, lost or stolen while traveling.

rmadisonwi

As a Platinum, I’ve had to wait a few minutes before. Depends on call volume. If there’s major IRROPS in the system, I’ve even had to have them call me back because the wait time is so long. I’d never assume it would be worth calling UA while standing in line at TSA.

msglsmo

What sort of due diligence should a traveler have to do in this case? A frequent flier may do more than casual flier, but in general wouldn’t the average traveler trust the airline to schedule in all the usual factors?

cmd320

There absolutely should be. The airline's system deleted the OPs BP for no reason causing the OP to miss their flight. This is 100% the fault of the airline and they should be proactively offering compensation.

tods27

The IAH international transfer has signs that indicate for TSA Precheck you need to exit and go to the regular checkpoint and not the transfer checkpoint. The problem is that it isn't very clear and there used to be a precheck line at the transfer security (at least I seem to remember one). Last November when I went through IAH, I almost went up to the transfer checkpoint, but realized that the precheck sign did not point that way. Not sure if that would have really changed the BP problem in any material way, but it's a good thing to remember if connecting in IAH.

There is a whole thread discussing use of paper BPs and/or the App for those looking to discuss that.

jpezaris

Any data that appears on your phone is most emphatically NOT yours. You have been granted temporary, conditional access to it, but you do not have ownership.

If you think it is otherwise, then you're not paying close enough attention.

jsloan

Checking FlyerTalk? Anybody who asked about a 90-minute I-D connection at IAH, or who read the IAH logistics thread, would have been told not to use the transit security.

And, again, this is all in the context of saying that this delay "ruined [his] trip." If I have that kind of schedule inflexibility, I'm at least looking up the IAH logistics thread so I know what to expect.

"Compensation," in this context, meaning "mandatory compensation." UA might give an ETC as a customer service gesture. Several people were suggesting that this was denied boarding and that DOT-mandated compensation should kick in, and that's simply not true -- and is generally counterproductive, because, anecdotally, going to UA with an invalid compensation demand often seems to make them reticent to provide said customer service gesture.