Customer Service Rep.
Not IMO.

Best, Dave

I'd rather have no seat assignment than a bad middle E- seat assignment. I'm not sure there is a worse seat you could be assigned at check in.
I suppose the only risk is getting VDBed but personally I'd take the risk and try to remove my seat assingment.

I can't have agreed with you more and this is exactly what I did. I called the US international hotline and asked if they would "release" the seats but unfortunately she couldn't/wouldn't/can't be bothered..whatever. Then I asked her to take me out of the pre-assigned 39E (I confirmed by checking on united.com) as i also think that there's no worse seat than the back of the plane and stuck in the middle 5. As my booking is confirmed and I will check-in early with my *G status (and my DEN-LAX flight is on time), hopefully UA would not VDB me.

Thank you to all of you guys.

Any chance of a reroute to the nonstop DEN-LHR flight on the 18th? Plenty of E+ and E- aisles showing on that flight.

Sadly, UA is determined to shoot itself in the foot here. Since the OP is a TG *G member, he/she can't tie E+ access to a non-UA account. So, without obnoxious FF# switches back and forth on each leg at the gate, this isn't even possible. While there are some brave souls out there who will do this, it isn't feasible to vast majority of the people who might be affected by it. (I'm pretty savvy of such things, and I can tell you that I wouldn't deal with that hassle!) And of course, even full Y tickets won't make a difference.

Partner *A folks should be a great source of revenue for UA w/ E+ Access, but they'd rather punish them and not take their money. At the very least, there should have been a seamless way to make this work when the E+ access was removed.

Thanks for the info. Still learning. You are right, I wouldn't risk switching FFP cos if something "goes wrong" and the miles ended up in UA-MP instead of my TG-ROP then i would be kicking myself. One of the reasons I choose UA is for the miles (+ lounge + priority luggages etc). Anyway I don't fly UA enough really, last time was on a long gone route already (JFK-LHR).

But the re-routing is interesting.
1) How does it work with UA?
2) Do I have to pay?
3) Or if I re-route on the same fare class it's ok?
4) Or shall I say are all fare class re-routable?

Can anyone explain more than what I would imagine the answer to be:
1) Depends
2) It varies
3) Maybe subject to a fee
4) Obviously not if it's not UA's fault like you miss a flight due to poor connections

Cheers guys.

You know, this is a strange one. I can see that 39A/B are currently available.

Why can't you, the OP, just get onto UAL.com and enter your ticket number and change your seat assignment?

If you can't, I would wonder about the bona fides of this post.

I've heard of cash buy-ups being offered from E- to E+ upon checkin, if seats are still available.

Not sure what are the chances on a international flight like this, though, or how much it would cost.

was that since the rule change gold star alliance partner travellers could not reserve E+ in advance, but would be given priority to be seated there (in E+) on the day of departure on a first come/first serve basis (seemed to be airport based at time of check-in)

Since 29 such seats are available, according to another poster, that sounds like pretty good odds.

My information is based on my being EB gold (SK) and connecting through SEA
on my way to/from CPH both before and after the rule change. I think there were at least 6-9 flight involved. As I was often arriving after a long flight from a timezone 9 hours away, I never tried online checkin, so don't know how that may/may not be impacted.

Hope this helped.

Previous thread on how to get E+ seating while crediting miles to another FFP:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=789044

What about staying unassigned until the day of the flight, and checking in at the airport? That may allow E- to fill up and UA would then have to put you in E+ gratis. Of course this comes with the disadvantage of a bad seat assignment.

I just tried to logon my itenary on ua.com and cannot "see" 39A/B available. I think again this is because you are UA 1K. I even tried to do a dummy booking and only 39E is available (the seat that I "gave up" yesterday).

As to thumbelina and bhmlurker, I just want an E- Window/Asle seat and not a middle seat that's all. I don't even want to try and hope for a E+ seat which I know I am not entitled for.

Thanks guys!

As a BD *G who flies a few times a year via ORD and onwards on UA, plus upcoming trips to LHR-IAD and an LAX-LHR I would happily invest in E+ access. Having read the thread and then the link to the above thread, I thought I'd give it a go and have just telephone UA reservations in the UK.

Their view is that basically that you *can* utilise the method in the above linked thread, but that typically there have been errors and miles posting incorrectly to UA that then cannot be transferred to another program. They advised me to either move full time to UA, or stick with BD and NOT buy access. I appreciated their honesty at least. The agent also put a note in my PNR for LAX-LHR to bump me to E+ if it is available.

Not the answer I was hoping for, but good service from them at least. ^

Hi guys, thanks for the advice. The seats did open up 48 hrs prior to my outbound flight on UA921. So I will keep checking for my inbound flight when it's nearer to time and hope to get a asile seat.

I have a question about the new intl B767-300. I have selected 28J based on the fact that on seatguru and seatexpert that it shows as E+ seat? however I couldn't find the seatmap on UA's offical webpage.

Can anyone confirm whether 28J/K really is E+? Just something I could look forward to.

Thanks a lot.