What about itineraries that include DCA?
 

I don't want to buy UA about this yet, but I have a flight to DCA in a couple of weeks. Will they automatically route me to Dulles or BWI? Or should I bug them now?

Has anyone dealt with this yet? Or is there a chance in hell that DCA will open by then?

Last news about Reagan National Airport is that there *may* be a chance that it will be closed indefinitely due it being located in close proximity to major governmental landmarks in the Washington Area. I believe there is alot of work being done now to consider the future of DCA.

Can't answer the question of DCA flights though - if I were you, I might call UA and make backup plans to BWI/IAD.




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"To Fly High, Fly and STAY *UNITED* - that's the only way to do it."

In a thread on the closing of DCA in MilesBuzz I related what I had done and been told by UA, AA and CO on this subject. For UA, I was told that it was too early to change from DCA to IAD on a 10 Oct departure. CO had more sense and allowed a free change on a 19 Oct departure.

I'd call and get them to switch it to bwi or iad now. They're very accommodating now; why run the risk of being shut out later if the bwi/iad flights fill up?

I don't think dca is going to reopen anytime soon.

I'm also scheduled to travel to DCA in a couple weeks and would appreciate any other wisdom here. I haven't wanted to bother UA the past few days either, but I also can't miss this trip. Even if the government reopens DCA I imagine it would take UA a few days at least to restart its service there, especially given the restrictions that might be imposed.

If there's no further news on National, I'll probably give UA a call later this week.

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I called them and since it's a discount ticket, they refuse to change it this early as Warren said. I'll have to wait til next week sometime.

I had a connection SFO-ORD-DCA which I booked because the SFO-IAD was ineligible for a discount fare on my complex itinerary (Sep 5 DCA-ORD-GRR / Sep 12 GRR-ORD-LAX / Oct 1 SFO-ORD-DCA). Sep 11 ocurred while I was in GRR and during one of the six(?) calls to rebook the GRR-ORD-LAX (eventually dropping the GRR and just getting ORD-LAX Sep 16), I asked the agent if she could change the final portion to SFO-IAD and she was happy to do so.

Obviously I may have had an advantage since she was already mucking around with the same record. And it is always easier to rebook continuing or return segments rather than outbound, especially on travel agency records. (My home base is LAX. I book my business travel in "reverse" so I can get Saturday night stay fares without actually being away over the weekend. Well, at least most of the time.)

I absolutely advise early rebooking to IAD or BWI. Look at it this way, if DCA comes back into service before you have to fly it will be easy to get the DCA back if you want it. If you sit with DCA and DCA does not open, it may not be too easy to confirm the alternate you prefer. Although I'm starting to fear it may be all too easy to confirm anything one wants over the next few weeks.

Charles

FYI...the latest interim timetable (see http://www.uatimetable.com/united.pdf ), updated September 20, 2001 at 1:00am is the first I've seen without any reference to flights to DCA. They've removed all the flights to/from DCA from the timetable and they are presumably canceled. As of right now united.com is still issuing tickets for these same flights, so they probably haven't loaded the cancelations into Apollo yet.

The current PDF timetable has numerous changes from the previous one, but carrie the same September 20, 1:00am date/time stamp.

In the latest edition, UA indicates a resumption of flights to DCA beginning September 29-30.

Yep, some flights are back on 9/29 and others on 10/1 according to the timetable. I checked my flight scheduled for 10/1 from ORD to DCA and it is still good. However my 11:20am flight from SNA to ORD has been killed. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif