Silver Fox

Smart move. And now mine has changed again and it looks like I have no seat assigned now either through united.com or .co.uk ! I am not amused by this.

Not only am I not amused but I am now in middle seats if I am lucky. No-one seems to know what is happening, if this goes pear shaped tomorrow it will be hard for me to fly United again even though I have 1K status. All seems to be under airport control at T-31 and the consensus from India and the USA is that nothing can be done. Great start to my day. I wish this rant was over. Note sent to Mr. Tilton (with no expectations of a reply).

And it gets so much better - despite being allocated by the agent a seat in E+ (24F, profile says "aisle", nice eh?) I go to online check-in to find that the retarded system (human or otherwise I know and care not) has placed me in 32J).

And I am still waiting for a call from the supervisor in India and am up to 5.5 hours now. Jolly well done United. As long as this is the case with the "conversion" I think the conversion I will be making is to another airline, in fact I just booked Virgin for my next couple of flights in 2010 (this flight will get me 1K status) and will think about my options for 2011 and whether to vote with my wallet.

kokonutz

I'm a little confused. Your flight LHR-IAD for Saturday has switched several times? And they keep shuffling your Y seat...or you lost an upgrade?

Just trying to understand the situation as I have IAD-LHR tonight and LHR-IAD sunday both on lay-flat config 777s on Z fare.

Sorry for your troubles but thanks for clarifying!

harston_boy

Perhaps I've just been lucky, but I've figured out that the only guaranteed way to find out what 777 config you'll be on is to use the United Cargo site, which in my experience is always 100% accurate (i.e. B777 vs. 77Q).

The seatmap shown on the UA website is frequently incorrect and those that rely on it can find their seats realloacted at check-in and the Elite call centre staff haven't got a clue. Seems absolutely crazy that UA don't know what plane will be used and craete customer problems when attempting to reassign seats at check-in, whereas UA cargo know exactly what plane type will be be used!

The UA Cargo site gives information for flights 7 days ahead of departure and can be found at www.unitedcargo.com. You'll need to select the "flight schedules" link and enter your departure date and airport codes. For tomorrow's flight from IAD to LHR, it shows UA922 as a 767, UA918 as a 77Q (new config) and UA924 as a 777 (old horrid config).

So, I hope you're on 918 not 924 tomorrow.

Hope this helps!
Trevor

Silver Fox

It is LHR-SFO.

kokonutz

Oh NO!!!!

Cargo shows LHR IAD 925 Nov 07 16:20 19:42 B777

Specifically bought a Z fare on this flight because dot bomb showed (and still shows!) a 77Q seatmap.

drewguy

And IAD-PEK is April-Oct only.

Silver Fox

Well in my case for tomorrow United just came up trumps. A very happy 1K again.

But I am still waiting for a call back from the supervisor in India !

kokonutz

Lol, you win, I lose!

mauiUAflyer

The potential upside of this is that there may now be NF space you could upgrade into (miles + copay, or UFC).

I got the downside of this last month, SFO-FRA, when we went from old to new config 777, and I had a "cleared" upgrade. I was downgraded.

FriendlySkies

Sorry to hear that you were downgraded! Were there that many people in C on the old bird that had paid, were GS, or just had a higher fare bucket?

harston_boy

Yeah, it's crazy. The cargo guys know that 925 on 7th NOV will be a B777, but the seat map and any similar access (including what UA agents can see) show it as a 77Q. I guarantee that when people check-in, there will be a mad panic by staff at the airport to re-assign seats. It's not just a problem in C/J, it's also bad for Y and Y+ customers, as the old config is 2-5-2 and the new 3-3-3 so there are lots of people who had an aisle seat, who end up with a middle. United really need to fix this issue, or else have someone manually check the cargo site 7 days from departure and change the seat map if necessary!

mauiUAflyer

The swap caused us to go from 11 F seats (+ one crew rest) to 8 F seats. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth, and I overheard a GS in the line waiting to board that he got downgraded as well. My wife's ticket was XF, so that was a safe seat, but my NF seat didn't stand.

I imagine that the downgrades work like upgrades, i.e., based on status and fare paid. I was on a Z ticket, so folks with D/C/J were ahead of me. They did send me an email apology (with out me even asking), refunded my miles, and even sent me 10k miles as compensation.

But at least it was a downgrade from old F to new C! Although I would have preferred the two old F seats we had next to each other, rather than being in separate cabins.

kokonutz

What happened was, knowing it would be a cock-up, I tried to check-in online a full 23 hours ahead. Didn't want to end up with 2 middle seats! We were unable to check in on dot.bomb, and the seatmap showed pretty much only middle seats left in the C cabin.

So I called 1k line. The agent was able to see our tickets and that the aircraft had been swapped but was unable to put us in any particular seat, saying it was under airport control. So I asked for a supervisor. And got disconnected. Called back, miraculously got the same agent who was very apologetic and put me right through to the supervisor. She checked and checked and it turned out the airport had reassigned our seats but this somehow made it impossible to check in online...had to be done at airport. Problem is, they put us in 11A and B, not middle but still less than desirable seats. And since the rest of the seats had been similarly reassinged there was no option to change.

Lol, no pre-departure drinks and then super-slow service that ate into sleeping time IAD-LHR and then an aircraft swap to the B777 on the return. As my fiancee said, it's really our own fault. Only fools and government contractors buy Z fares on UA metal!

Ineresting thought on the upgrade. I'll go ask at the transfer desk!

SeattleDavid

It isn't crazy at all - I think you're falling into the trap of thinking the airline business always runs as planned, whereas it doesn't and they have plans for that as well. I checked in for an A319 last week (at 16 hours ahead) and when I was at the airport they changed the gate and we were on an A320 - and our 319 went to somewhere else. It is all quite normal.

If you watch unitedcargo carefully you'll often see that the plan they had at 7 days out changes once or twice over the course of those seven days and often right up to the last minute. Unitedcargo doesn't ever give you a definitive prediction of what kind of plane you'll get - it simply gives you the current plan.

Seatmaps and seat assignments are not changed seven days out because there is a high likelihood that they may change again and so they leave it as it has been up until airport control. What happens then depends on various factors such as whether they know that there will be 2 77Qs at IAD, or DEN or SFO at that departure time (in which case OLCI may well work as they feel confident one of those will fly your route), but if there is only going to be one 77Q and two or three 777s then they hold off on check-in and seat assignments until much nearer departure.

If you use flightaware to track the actual planes you will see that there are some very common circuits that bring two 77Qs into Denver late afternoon and to LAX late morning, making DEN-LHR and LAX-LHR (and v.v) two of the more reliable flights for 77Qs. And using flightaware you should be able to see a couple of days ahead whether one or two of the new guys will be around for your departure.

Koko

was on DXB-IAD on 11/6 new config, it was first flight on new 777 for all crew as they seemed very excited but were very nervous.