kkg

Sounds like your are on a revenue ticket while I was talking about award tickets, if I read you correctly.

ufo

Indeed, I was on a revenue ticket which was upgraded with a GPU. But the infant fee was based on the lowest available business first fair. I have the theory that if I had added the infant before the GPU, then it would have been applied at the lowest available coach fare and I dont think they would have collected more when the GPU was processed, but I couldnt get evidence to prove this.

My point though is that it doesnt seem to matter whether it is a revenue/revenue+instrument/reward ticket. Their rule is 10% of lowest fare for the cabin you are sitting in when you add the infant.

sbm12

I don't believe that theory is accurate.

And it is 10% of the fare available at the time of request in that cabin. Has been for a while now AFAIK.

Innerloop

I believe the OP is correct. If you ticket the infant and then upgrade, they do not think to come chase you down for the fare differential. At east not yet, maybe a future change we'll like!

I have done this a couple times including miles & co-pay ups from Z to F and no problems so far.

HerbFlyer

Slightly off topic, but similar questions ...

My wife and I are flying to BKK in October on W fares (approx $1700: $1100 base fare, $450 YQ, misc taxes). We're bringing our infant along as a lap child, so we paid a 10% fare -- total of about $122 broken down as $67 base fare, no YQ, misc taxes. I think they used lowest market fare available at time of ticketing - a K fare. At time of booking we used GPUs to waitlist upgrades and were told that because the infant was ticketed in Y with us we're all set.

Today one of the segments clears for the adults into R. United is now telling us that we're obligated to pay 10% of occupied, not ticketed cabin, so we're going to be paying 10% business fare. Worse, they're only going to reticket him once all the various segments clear ... and it will be based upon business cabin availability at that point in time. So although they publish a ~5K Z fare in the market, I will bet it's going to be based upon the ~12K C fare due to how inventory prices out. And I can imagine that if only some of the segments actually clear then they'll probably try to price segments individually as NRT-SFO which I imagine is a more expensive market.

This is immensely frustrating since not only is the information I'm now being told does not match up with what were told at time of original ticketing ... it feels like the system is designed to maximally penalize us, the customer.

At this point I'm sort of feeling like the simplest answer is to purchase a third seat for our infant as a W-fare (hopefully getting 25% child discount) and then using additional GPUs to upgrade him -- assuming everything clears, then at least he will have his own seat, we'd be paying approximately the same thing that we would have been paying just for the 10% business class privilege, etc.

Am I approaching this situation incorrectly? Have I been given the wrong facts? Any advice -- especially with the "new" United -- would be appreciated.

TerryK

+1.:-: That has been the case for at least 20 years.

All sounds correct, technically. YQ needs to be recalculated if tickets are reissued which was probably necessary since infant needs to be on the same PNR as travelling adult(s). You could have gotten a partial refund if YQ went down.

Perhaps you can ask UA to waive some fees as one time courtesy?

salesna

In my experience this is the case. In May, my wife and I flew to Europe with our 6 month old as a lap child. We booked in W and then used GPUs to upgrade to business. Our daughter was already on the reservation when we upgraded, and there was no fare increase for her to reflect 10% of the business class fare.

HerbFlyer

Interesting. Doesn't match at all with my experience with several agents this weekend. Does anybody know of any detailed, written policy on how this stuff works?

vsreeniv

I am trying to book award travel ORD-SIN for 3 people with an infant (under 2 years old).
ORD-AMS-SIN using united on first leg and singapore airlines on second leg gives me an infant fee of $388
ORD-LHR-SIN using united on first leg and singapore airlines on second leg give me an infant fee of $0!!!!!

can anyone explain this discrepancy? Same set of airlines just connecting through different gateways..

Unfortunately only 2 seats are available on the LHR route. so I am trying to understand what is the logic to figure out the infant fee on award travel

your help is greatly appreciated

ryman554

Not written, but definitely have a lot of experience with this.

Fare = 10% of the ADULT FARE that the infant is "attached to".

Plus taxes, and any other fees.

Now, I have not done this since 3/3 cut-over, but on PMUA, it was still 10% of the PAID ADULT FARE, regardless of upgrading.

Given that CO wants to reticket you, I honestly don't know the policy now.

And, this is all given a "lap child" fare -- an infant in their own seat is (more or less) full $$.

kkg

If you are pricing this out with united.com, you might need to take a closer look at the final screen. The page where you saw 0 infant fee might not have included the infant ticket at all, even if your search indicated an infant. I experienced this before. United.com simply removes the infant from the search when it is not able to calculate the fare.

- Damon

ufo

They did credit me back the $25 fee, and said that was incorrect. Though I'm not entirely sure if the fee was correct, or if as a 1K I shouldnt have paid it.

My conclusion over the whole thing.... this 10% stuff may have been the process for a long time, however:

1. I dont see why infant fares where there are no seats involved, should be based on available seat prices for sale.
2. I dont see why infant fares should be cabin dependent.

I guess they do what they can get away with.

Does anyone have experience with other airlines - do they have similar policies?

vsreeniv

I went all the way til the last checkout page where I enter the credit card details. It clearly showed all the travelers name including the infant but still no infant charge.
Again this happens only if the routing is through LHR.

is this a potential glitch?

azepine00

Yes (bolding mine). IIRC the rule was there in the past as well but judging by reports wasn't really enforced. I never tried myself though.
On a semirelated note AA does enforce it and i had to pay extra when an upgrade for a friend with lap infant cleared.

http://www.united.com/web/en-US/cont...s/default.aspx

travellerK

To get back to the OP's question, I have an award ticket EWR-ZRH-TLV/TLV-ZRH-FRA-EWR (in C).

I added my infant on with no problems, despite the various airlines involved. (I was charged $303 + Tax = 356). Now I wanted to change the outbound to EWR-FRA-TLV (to get a better connection and because I hear that LH bassinets are better than UA/LX bassinets). I had assumed that because the origin and destination are the same and this is more than 21 days out, there would be no change fee. The agent on the phone told me that for me there is no change fee, but the infant (who I had assumed is just a tag along on my ticket) is concidered a paid ticket and therefore subject to a $250 change fee for any changes. Is this correct? Any better options here?