Had an itinerary for March Madness (March 19th - 22nd) STL - DEN - LAS and vice versa. I'm a 1k and this was an award ticket.

I originally booked flights arriving to Vegas at 11:45. It was changed to 12:17, no big deal. Got another schedule change, now looking at a 12:55 arrival. My friends all arrive on other flights around 11 am - and I'm not too keen on taking a taxi by myself and paying more.

Call United tonight, the nice CSR says there's nothing she can do, as the total change needs to be at least 90 minutes to force me onto another flight. Tells me to hold, and she'll get a supervisor, who puts me on the earliest flights of the day STL - DEN - LAS, getting there around 10 am. ^^^

That's what customer service should be.

Good to see that the airlines still are willing to help a guy out.

You're a 1K and we're talking about an award ticket -- you can make whatever change you want, regardless of the schedule change as long as there are award seats available on the desired flights. Not sure if they opened a seat for you or if she checked with her supervisor to find out its a free change for a 1K regardless of the schedule change.

"and I'm not too keen on taking a taxi by myself and paying more."

1K going on an award ticket to LAS, not wanting to pay the $10 to the strip? come again?

The earliest STL-DEN (5335) and DEN-LAS (1147) on March 19 both show NY0/XY0, so it would appear that the CSR's supervisor got IM to open up an NY seat for the OP. Kudos to the CSR, the supe, and IM for working this out. ^

(As an aside: it looks like United smells $$$ with the NCAA games in Vegas. All of the ORD/DEN-LAS flights on March 19 are showing NY0/XY0. Can't fault United for that, right?)

I might be going out on a limb here, but isn't there more to Vegas than the strip.... And also, when was the last time you took a $10 taxi from LAS to anywhere.

I think the OP has a legitimate gripe, besides the fact that he could just cancel the award ticket and rebook for free (assuming avaliability) - he booked the first ticket to arrive when his friends did. 2 schedule changes later this was no longer happening.

As long as I can get out of Vegas on the 18th to see my Rebels play in the NCAAs is all I care about (presuming they make it).

From the thread title I thought maybe United's food helped you with your constipation.

Agree, the UA CSR have been very helpful in general. I booked 4 Award Reservations for the Beijing Olympics last summer. They are very helpful in terms of openning available seets to accomodate us on the same flight!

Great work United!

You haven't been to Vegas in quite a while if you think you can take a taxi to the "Strip" for $10. I was in town last week and it was a cool $20 from the Flamingo to the airport.

That's why it's always handy to keep a copy of the ORIGINAL itinerary that you booked. You can always claim that it is now a 90 minute change from what you'd ORIGINALLY booked. 99.9% of the time, when you mention that, they'll make the fix for you.

Gmail takes care of that for me. Sadly, it's not yet 90 minutes from my original bookings. It went from 11:40 am to 12:55 pm.

Award travel is solidly unavailable for these dates, being both Spring Break and March Madness.

And yes, $10 or (more likely $20) is dear to me. I'm not made of money. Sadly, however, I'm made of miles. There's a condition where using tickets for flights like this does prove beneficial - when you don't make enough money to use the miles on a trip to Europe, Asia, and other far flung places.

I certainly can understand your frugality, however I used miles for a trip to SE Asia where I paid a whopping $22 in taxes and hotels will cost me about $30-$40 a day. IMO, my 4 days in SE Asia will cost me about the same as a weekend in Vegas. YMMV.