Forums >Off the Beaten Path>Not flying United
Interval Junkie --Nobby
Found this out last week (in the best way possible </sarcasm>:
If you miss your first flight of a round-trip ticket (for example, if you were going to Baltimore and work needs you in DC a few days earlier), United will cancel your return flight without notification.
Apparently, you're supposed to tell them you still want your return-flight . . . and pay a $200 fee to "change" your flight. You know, to "change" it so you're on the flight you originally paid to be on.
So, that $232 ticket ends up costing $432 for only using half of what you paid for. (oh, and of course United gets to over-sell the flight $$$, or if not then profits from the fuel saved not having to lug your body and luggage through the air $$).
On the return flight, you may or may not be given a random 2yo to sit in your lap.
2021 Goals: 50mpw 'cause there's nothing else to do
One day at a time
Ugh, that's frustrating. And if you don't have a seat assignment before you get to the gate, you could get bumped. United did that to my son and husband a few years ago. They missed a day of an already short ski vacation. When I tried to get them seats for their return trip, the agent said it wasn't possible. I told her I was not getting off the phone until I got them. It took awhile and several transfers, but I finally did.
That's one reason I won't buy the super cheap tickets that they've started selling. You can't get a seat assignment! No thank you.
Found this out last week (in the best way possible </sarcasm>: If you miss your first flight of a round-trip ticket (for example, if you were going to Baltimore and work needs you in DC a few days earlier), United will cancel your return flight without notification.
I don't fly United but I think this is standard practice for the airlines, which is one reason why I have been known at times to book several one-way tickets instead of a single round-trip or multi-city ticket.
Runners run
Found this out last week (in the best way possible </sarcasm>: If you miss your first flight of a round-trip ticket (for example, if you were going to Baltimore and work needs you in DC a few days earlier), United will cancel your return flight without notification. Apparently, you're supposed to tell them you still want your return-flight . . . and pay a $200 fee to "change" your flight. You know, to "change" it so you're on the flight you originally paid to be on.
I think most airlines have been doing this for a long time. In part I believe to discourage people buying back-to-back tickets (or something similar) and just not using the segments they don't need.
Question: when you changed the outbound leg, didn't you just change the whole itinerary? In that case you would pay the $200 fee because of the outbound change, and just keep the same return leg.
Dave
The airlines have been cancelling all further segments of a booking if one misses one of the segments for a long time now. Also they can arbitrarily refuse any accommodations for missing a flight because you only had 30 minutes to clear immigration/customs, change terminal, clear security etc as long the original flight left the gate on time and was help up on the tarmac for an hour because of ATC hold. They can also refuse to re-book the missed flight without a change fee. A-holes all around.
However this bumping off a 2 y/o so they can squeeze in an extra body is a new low. Their reason of the boarding pass not being properly scanned is a laughable excuse. So are they basically admitting that they can let people on board without a valid boarding pass?
I think their excuse was that because the kid's boarding pass was not scanned properly, it looked like an open seat, so they let the standby on. But it's unfathomable that as soon as they realized that seat was already taken, they didn't march the standby guy right off. Supposedly the flight attendant just "shrugged". SMH.
Feeling the growl again
Being that my local airport is a non-hub, I fly all airlines and have had multiple bad experiences with each, except Southwest. IMHO the current worst are American, AirTran, and Frontier. United is middle of the pack.
Ideally, if you fly enough, suck it up and pool all your flights to one carrier and get status. Then they will start to treat you like a human being. Alternatively, rather than being a jerk to the employee stuck dealing with you when something happens, treat them with respect too. It's surprising how much more motivated someone is to help you or make exceptions for you when you aren't being a jerk to them for a problem they didn't personally cause. I've had all sorts of fees waived and other accommodations made because of the way I treated the agent assisting me.
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
I've experienced both kinds of customer service agents, some are willing to listen to you, make accommodations sometimes going the extra mile,and others that are outright jerks on a power trip. Have been flying on business 20+ years and not sure if I've behaved differently with either kind.
So I used to do a lot of dealing with airline stuff...1. Yup, canceling the rest of your itinerary if you miss a leg is standard for airlines and has been for at least 15 years. It actually started way back when to prevent people from rigging the system. (A fun one: Person trying to get from DC to DFW finds a flight from DC to IAH that connects in DFW that happens to be cheaper than the flight from DC to DFW. This sounds stupid, but airfare pricing is stupid and this happens lots. So person books DC to IAH... but gets off the plane in DFW. Glory be! Cheaper travel! Airlines got wise to this back in the 90s so they started completely nuking itineraries if you don't show up for a leg.)2. That thing where United let the guy on and the kid had to ride in the lap, as with many of these, we're not getting the full story. In this case I do not know what the full story is (I used to know for some of these dipshit things), but one aspect sticks out... not just that the kid's boarding pass didn't scan (I'll come back to that), it's that the standby dude has been quoted as having a $75 fare. From Hawai'i. What we have there is a "nonrev" passenger flying on a buddy pass (family member works for United) or company person (like a flight attendant) on vacation. Which makes the story extra weird. As for "the child's boarding pass did not scan"... this piece may be true on the surface, but it should have been linked to the parent's boarding pass and when trying to close out the flight, they should have, well, asked the parent who was checked in. OR it was not linked the parent's boarding pass in which case they had an unattended toddler situation. Which doesn't happen. Especially from Hawai'i.Bottom line here is that we're not getting the full story. Before we get out the torch and pitchforks, just realize that there's something not quite right.
Just boarded a United flight. You could have told me yesterday not to fly them. Sheesh.
As for "the child's boarding pass did not scan"... this piece may be true on the surface, but it should have been linked to the parent's boarding pass and when trying to close out the flight, they should have, well, asked the parent who was checked in. OR it was not linked the parent's boarding pass in which case they had an unattended toddler situation. Which doesn't happen. Especially from Hawai'i.
Even with a properly scanned boarding pass I've had an airline try to move my son from his paid seat to my lap so they could make way for more passengers. They had already promised the seat to the passenger, I stood my ground, and the agent was in tears by the end of the fiasco. What a shitty flight.MTA: Just realized this was about 13 years ago. Where did the time go?
2. That thing where United let the guy on and the kid had to ride in the lap, as with many of these, we're not getting the full story. In this case I do not know what the full story is (I used to know for some of these dipshit things), but one aspect sticks out... not just that the kid's boarding pass didn't scan (I'll come back to that), it's that the standby dude has been quoted as having a $75 fare. From Hawai'i. What we have there is a "nonrev" passenger flying on a buddy pass (family member works for United) or company person (like a flight attendant) on vacation. Which makes the story extra weird.
Story said that standby dude was traveling from Houston to Boston, not from Hawaii like the Yamauchis. We don't know his actual starting point. It could have just been Houston.
Also the $75 was likely his change fee, not the price of his ticket. But, yeah, there's definitely details missing.
This has always been my flying experience too. Goes for flight attendants as well. It always seems to me that it's more their attitude/mood than anything the passenger does or doesn't do. This goes for their interactions with me as well as what I observe with other people. I have little doubt that having status helps to a certain degree. A full price first class ticket probably helps even more. I concur with Spaniel that Southwest is almost always OK. All of the others are hit and miss at best.
All systems Go!
As a frequent traveler on various airlines over the many years, I'd say the arbitrary and capricious enforcement of carryon bag size limits is my biggest pet peeve. At least 1 flight a year, I'm told my bag won't fit in the overhead and I'll have to gate check it. I kindly tell them that this bag fit in the overhead of the same airplane for the last x number of weeks, but to no avail. If it won't fit in their little bicycle rack, then I can't take it on-board. Not wanting to be a persona-non-gratis on any airline, I surrender my bag and get on the plane. I then sit in my seat watching at least 10 other roller bags the same size as mine (or bigger) roll on by. I silently wonder how these bags were able to fit in that little bicycle rack. Did their bags have a secret Ant-Man button that would miraculously shrink them down down to the size of a clutch purse?