VegasGambler

Did you really think that they were lying to you?

findark

The complicating factor is that the United flight SFO-ZRH is nearly sold out in all cabins, which is contributing to married inventory suppression.

Both LX1674 and LX1680 are Y0 when married with UA44 SFO-ZRH. (1674 is J7 C3 D2 Z0 .. Y0, and 1680 is J2 C0 .. Y0)



The UA website will "sell you the connection" by inserting a fare break at ZRH, in full Y followed by full J.

The agents were quite correct that there is no space on the connecting flight. The technical solution to this is far beyond what I would expect from a front-line agent and would require a minor miracle to push through: contact LX and receive approval to long-sell the LX connecting flight in Y, on the basis of passenger recovery and the fact that seats still exist standalone. It's entirely possible LX would refuse this.

United shouldn'thave lost the segment, whatever happened, but once inventory on another airline is gone... it's usually gone.

nealsense

Well, the reason I said that is that 3 agents and the supervisor told me that there was no economy availability on my original flight as well as the 5pm flight. It was only in the last conversation with the supervisor after many many back and forths, he suddenly informed me that he could get 4 tickets in the 5pm flight. So, maybe he figured something out but clearly it was possible. We are now booked on the 5pm flight.

WineCountryUA

If what happened to me happen in this case, LX cancelled their flight. And then replaced it in the system with a Helvetica operated flight. No sure how UA would not lose the segment in those circumstances.

Yes, at times it may be beyond the competence / capability of the individual or the system to do. That should not be confused as a deliberate act to deceive As this discussion has shown, this was not your typical schedule change circumstance.

nealsense

findark Thank you for the detailed explanation. As mentioned above the original operator was Swiss and they changed it to Helvetic. Maybe that switch caused all the issues? But, its still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that one can have a confirmed ticket bought via United on their partner flight and one can get kicked out even though the same flight code exists/seats are available. I am saying this from a consumer/passenger perspective. Last, the flippant attitude of United agents that I can rebook you on June 7th or we can refund your tickets vs. let me work through this. Let me try and call Swiss and figure out what might be happening here is what got my blood boiling throughout this process.

cfischer

Married segments are tough to overcome. Had to be something like that. Helvetic is really Swiss ... no difference whatsoever. The codeshare flight number changed and they couldn't get new fresh inventory because of the married segment with the TATL flight. Makes sense and it takes someone to figure that out and then guide an agent towards a solution. These are pretty rare problems, but too bad UA couldn't figure out they are actually solvable.

jsloan

Without getting further into esoterica... it's possible for there to be seats available on flight A, seats available on flight B, and no seats available on the combination of flights A + B. It sounds absurd, but it's 100% true. That's what was happening here, and that's ultimately why you ran into problems.

findark correctly pointed out the process that an agent would need to take to work around that, but we're talking about an expert agent, working in conjunction with someone from Swiss. i.e., if you're looking to fix this, you're going to need a conference call.

FWIW, keep your eye on the flight. If sufficient seats from your origin to your destination appear, call UA and ask to be re-accommodated. They should see them in their system at that point. Just because there's no inventory today doesn't mean that there will be no inventory tomorrow.

RobOnLI

At least you have a flight confirmed now! That's the good news.

The other piece of good news is ZRH has one of the best lounges for *G passengers around. With that long of a layover you'll have plenty of time to use it and watch the planes coming/going from the outside terrace.

Enjoy the trip.

-RM

Microwave

On the OP's date of travel, LX1674 looks like this in EF, searching just LX O/D with a USA point of sale:
If I look for EWR-ZRH-FLR the evening before, including UA and LX, again with a USA point of sale, I get this for the same flight:
When I do a one-way search on united.com from EWR to FLR, the ZRH connection shows up, though it doesn't show ZRH-FLR as a UA codeshare; rather, the search results show with the LX flight number. Inventory unsurprisingly looks the same as the EWR-ZRH-FLR above.

In either event, there's plenty of Y inventory there, and I don't understand why a United agent or supervisor couldn't easily see that: 1) this is obviously the flight the OP booked; 2) the OP didn't do anything intentional to remove the flight in question; and 3) clearly economy seats are still available, so booking one of them is the right thing to do for a 1K in this instance. Maybe I'm missing something or being naïve, though it seems to me this isn't a tall ask, and shouldn't require any complex coordination with LX. Certainly if United wanted to force the booking into the original class, it would likely need to oversell that class which would require coordination with LX, but that's not the only way to resolve this issue.

JimInOhio

If you change the departure point to SFO, do you get different results in EF?

nealsense

Super interesting. Yes, if you change to SFO you see only business seats and no availability in Y. But if you route through EWR you see Y seats!!

findark

Yes, the issue is that 09-Jun UA44 is J5 O0 Y6.

LX1680 has Y space if you marry it with LX39 SFO-ZRH instead.

Microwave

Yup... Married segment logic does seem to come into play as this is what it returns:
I guess my hope in posting the EWR option was to be able to demonstrate to someone at United with critical thinking skills that the flight isn't in fact full.

jsloan

It would only matter if UA were willing to try to sell the married segment inventory even though it doesn't actually exist.​​​​​​, and if LX agreed to allow it to be ticketed despite the lack of inventory. That's why you'd need a conference call to get this done.

The fact that there are seats on the flight if booked from EWR doesn't mean that UA can override the inventory when the flight is booked from SFO.

JimInOhio

UA's problems run even deeper here. Along with originating at SFO, there's zero Y inventory on the connection when originating at ORD, too (despite, apparently, being offered for sale at a higher fare than J). It's available when originating at IAD as well as EWR.