chix

If you choose to go to the airport and take your chances at the counter or gate, is the $25 waived?

SkiAdcock

"Can I still standby for free at the gate?
Yes. You would still clear about 20 minutes out, based on the usual factors."

chix

Thanks! Will security let you through if you are on a 5 PM and you want an 8 AM?

ozweepay

This has probably been mentioned before, but isn't this bad news for UA's elites? Seems like another way to sell benefits out from under UA's best flyers.

Suppose there is 1 seat available on a flight leaving in 2 hrs. A first-time UA flyer and a UGS both want to standby for that flight; the GM reaches the gate agent first and pays $25 after being told that there is only 1 seat. The UGS then gets put on the WL and perhaps doesn't clear.

Is this really the priority wants to adopt here? Someone who will give UA $300 for the whole year gets a seat over someone who gives UA $50,000 in that same year?

Or am I missing something?

Dromomaniac

Yes. But, if you're talking about confirming a standby, you could/would probably want to do this at the ticket counter.

Edit: Sorry, that's not what you were talking about. To answer your question, yes, that has never been a problem for me. If you get questioned, just tell them you plan to stand by for a different flight. Not an issue.

CApreppie

Very useful and helpful. I think this one is for United FAQ sticky.

LAX UA 1K

Possibly, but I think there are several factors that work in favor of the elites. First, frequent flyers are much more likely to use the policy to change plans compared to infrequent flyers. Elites often want upgrades so this is a great policy because we can get on the flight in coach in advance and then clear upgrades according to status with everyone else. People who spend $50K on tickets a year probably won't mind paying $25 for the confirmation...or may be on flexible tickets where they can switch for free.

Also, the airport is not supposed to confirm someone if it would cause the flight to be totally full or oversold (capacity minus one is the limit). Thus, even if the GM gets the last confirmed seat, the UGS is pretty likely to get on the flight.

It's not clear whether the phone agents are bound by this booking rule or just the inventory rule, but the effect is likely to be similar.

And the posts at the head of this thread are GREAT. Definitely link or move to the FAQ.

Charles

rcs85551

Compare it to DL's same-day-confirmed program: they will confirm you on the new flight even up to the overbooking authorization by revenue management. So if the flight is already overbooked by let's say 20 seats, and there is 1 seat left, you can still get it under the SDC program at Delta.

United only does it up to cabin capacity minus one, so with the usual no-shows and everything, it is not as bad as it looks.

However, DL's model of waiving the $25 for middle and top tier plus allowing standby is probably the best.

thegingerman

So if my original flight is the 2 PM and I want the 11PM, I can't get confirmed until 7PM?


Then if U is available but not H, there's no confirmed standy? How does this interact with the "cabin capacity minus one" mentioned a couple posts up?

robb

That is correct. This whole "benefit" is annoying and stupid, and serves only to charge us for what we were getting for free before.



I actually have no idea what U inventory is, but basically you have to have inventory in your original booking class or H inventory in order to do this.

The cabin capacity - one means exactly that. Regardless of how many seats there are available in saleable inventory, they will only offer you this confirmation if there has been no overbooking, and, in fact, they must be underbooked by more than 1.

It is possible to have a flight overbooked, but still have 9 seats for sale in Y, 4 in H, and 1 in Q (as an example). In that case, they'll still not confirm you onto the flight.

chuck1

H is actually generous because most of these fares will have booked into T/S/W/U/V/Q.

They are letting you jump up classes for $25 instead of collecting the difference.

If a flight looks like this
Y9 B9 M9 H4 Q0 V0 S0 T0 W0 etc..

and you are holding V you could actually get on this flight for $25 without paying the difference.

Now the way I read it is that the airport cannot overbook a flight, but the res agent can book you as long as H is available

Do I understand that correctly?

ozweepay

We're talking standby here... you don't pay a fare difference. Yes, you'd normally pay a fare difference if confirming on a different flight, but this is really a standby with much tighter restrictions (like disallowing routing changes).

I don't think so.

The way I read the profile is that you are booked into your proper fare class, and if that's not available, you get booked into H. This is for bookkeeping, but once again there is no payment of fare difference for standbys.

The profile states that they cannot oversell via this policy... they must leave one seat open, so the H availability is irrelevant.

At least that's my take.

thegingerman

Does anyone have the profile text for UA*S MISSED TRIP POLICY?

Is this the so-called "flat-tire rule"?

jetsetter

A big thank you to Phoenician Aviator and rcs85551 for the useful information. I really like reading the insider information e.g. the UA profiles that the agents see and the summary in post 1 is good too for a quick overview and for people not in to this stuff so much .

I have some comments and questions:

*Could you post the Missed Trip policy also? What is the Missed Trip policy?
*If the agent does not reissue or revalidate the e-ticket coupon to the newly booked segment in the PNR, how does the system check you in for that new segment? I thought an e-ticket needed to be matched to the PNR segment either through reissue or revalidation. Does this mean they technically can check you in to any flight even if your e-ticket coupon does not match the flight?
*It is interesting that the RSR procedure is shorter, and does not mention checking Faster Air to see if a flight is overbooked. I too have the question of whether the way this is worded an RSR would book a pax in H on a flight authorized to oversell? In the RSR procedure there is nothing about checking the load?
*It sounds like it would be easy for an agent to "forget" to collect the fee. It sounds like the fee is technically not tied to checking in the pax so if they wanted too they could complete all the steps without chargint ehfee . In practice also they can revalidate the e-ticket without collecting the fee, and even book the pax in Y;
*It sounds like especially as a 1P or 1K, it would generally be to your advantage to do regular standby unless you were trying to get an upgrade? I imagine this would put you in a better position for clearin in to an upgrade? The other advantage might be to getting a better seat in economy Plus, though I would think that most upgraders might free up preferred coach seats. I think I would generally do the $0 standby, unless there was some specific reason to confirm it and pay the extra fee? As a 1K can you see any advantage to this over standby besides an upgrade scenario? I think for a general member on a very full flight it may be more of an advantage since the GM would be relatively low on the standby list if there were lots of elites? E.g. on a flight with a total of 2 open seats it might be to the advantage of a GM to get confirmed.

I think UA will be able to sell this especially to GM's. To the average GM Air World is a mysterious place, and if an ATO or RSR said to the GM
"You can pay $25 to be confirmed, or go standby for free but your not guaranteed to get out," the GM probably would pay. The average GM has no idea about how standby works, and would not ask about the booking load on the flight. If there were 100 open seats the average nervous GM might just opt to pay the fee .

rcs85551

There you go:

International: