ctownflyer

What about selling tickets yesterday for 5/10?!? There's just no excuse for that. UA knew they were going to cancel well before yesterday morning when they stopped selling tickets for Friday.

UA's consistent close-in cancellations to TLV since 10/7 have been an anomaly among every other carrier to TLV are is costing UA a lot in goodwill.

Close-in cancellations make it nearly impossible to get rebooked and it's causing people to book away from UA.

craftyabs

I have a trip originally EWR to TLV 5/24 and back 5/30. Just spoke to customer service and they offered to:
1) Move flight to when United is flying again to TLV (won't work for me)
2) ATH, DXB, or AMM and can change dates to hit the AMM flight on 5/23 for example
3) Refund

I asked to rebook my ticket to catch a flight through Europe via Brussels, Zurich, etc. They said they cannot do that until 7 days before my original ticketed flight (so until 5.17, and cant fix my return flight until 5/24 by having me making a second call then). This seems absolutely unworkable to not change now for these flights. As an aside, I bought the tickets 5 days ago, though not relevent I suppose. Is this policy to change within 7 days of a flight normal? Reading the policy above and I may not fully be getting it.

ctownflyer

The agent is misreading the policy. You can move the date to +/- 7 days.
HUCA.

craftyabs

On with customer service. They are reading the policy out loud to me. It says they cannot book us on codeshares or non UA metal. For example, I asked to be on UA 30 (EWR to MUC) and connect on LH 680 (MUC to TLV) and they said they is not permitted since it is an LH flight. They cannot book on partner flights until I am within 7 days of departure and then it will be as seats are available. Third agent.

I pointed out that I can purchase and book this exact itin on the UA web site, but no dice.

Chamor

In other words: "Wait until all the LHG flights are fully booked, and then we can try to switch you to an LHG flight -- but we won't be able to do that, because the flights will be fully-booked."

WineCountryUA

Have you tried a second agent?

craftyabs

yes. third agent, so now it looks like I have to cancel trip entirely, which is a major bummer. I am very frustrated with united on this. Understand they make operational decisions, but the accommodation is abysmal.

ctownflyer

Try DMing on X or chatting in app.

They are misreading the actual policy. The problem is that once the PNR is noted, it's hard to find a rep that can use their brain. No codeshare is allowed for change of destination to AMM/ATH/DXB, but LH flights are obviously allowed for moving to LH Group to TLV.
https://jetstream.united.com/#/news-...X00000b47ZAQAY

And the 7 day policy is talking about days from the canceled flight. It should be shocking that reps can't understand their own rules, but sadly, it's not.

uanj

Is there a major difference in price?

theroz

This must be new, I helped some friends who were booked mid June TLV-FRA on UA code share and then FRA-EWR the next morn(they wanted the 4:30pmm flight out of TLV. Turns out the code share was dropped from that flight and they were rebooked on the 4:45AM flight on LH, which didnt work for them. I told them dont deal with UAs Phillipines call center keep calling till you get a US one. And then ask for a supervisor , which they did and were rebooked on the TLV-MUC flight @ 5PM on a LH flight# and not a UA flight#

The KEY is having to keep calling till you get a US Call Center, the Philipines agents just lie thru their teeth and make things up , the 1st one told them their flight was never confirmed and that LH had 72 hrs to confirm it and they didnt, only problem was my friends booked their tkts back in Feb and even purchased seats on it, would have paid anything to see the agents face when told that

Just wanted to add the 1stb question you should ask after your call is answered is, "Where are you based?" If the answer isnt somewhere in The US just hang up and keep calling till thats what you hear, I cant stress this enough since once you have a change made anything after that will cost you, and the agents in The Phillipines arent your friend

craftyabs

Appreciate all the help here from people with direct and practical experience! +1 for FT community. Ultimately what we did is rebook through Munich on the way to TLV and for getting home, move to the DXB to EWR flights and purchase our own positioning flight TLV to DXB to catch the 2am DXB departure. Trip coming up in a few days, so things might play out differently as things unfold. Most interesting to me is how much work it was to find an agent that could assist - literally had to point them to the Jetstream documentation ctownflyer shared here (THANK YOU!). In this situation, the flights are booked coach, with an upgrade request to Business and the agent commented we have a better shot of getting the upgrade through DXB than through TLV in their experience. We would have considered the AMM flight, but were nervous about the land border crossing being unpredictable time wise.