When flying somewhere via a connection, it's never fun to see your first flight delayed, making it physically impossible for you to make the second. In many cases, your first reaction might be to just get really upset, think about having to spend the night in your connecting airport, etc. Instead of doing that, call the airline, tell them about the important event you will miss if you don't get there in time, and let them know you would like to be re-booked on another airline. Actually, take that one step further. Go onto Kayak or any similar website, find the actual route you want them to put you on, call them up, and tell them to do it. This has worked for me with 100% success over the past few years, and I had a great example of it two weeks ago.
I had to fly from San Francisco to Madison the other day. My routing was SFO-DEN-MSN. I had a 40 minute connection in Denver. While I was waiting in the Red Carpet Club in SFO, I got a FlightTrack Pro notification that my SFO-DEN flight would be delayed by an hour. The connection would be missed. My SFO-DEN flight was supposed to depart at 5PM. I opened up Kayak and searched for alternative flights to Madison that night... nothing. Okay I needed to be there for my 10AM meeting so what about getting to ORD or MSP that night and flying in the morning? Both of UA’s later two flights to ORD were sold out. MSP? Bingo! Delta had a 6:45PM flight from SFO-MSP. Then they had a morning flight that got me into Madison by 8:30AM, just in time for my morning meeting. I called up the 1K line, told them the connection I would miss and that I needed to be rebooked. Without even giving them a chance to look, I gave them the flight numbers that would work for me. Within 30 minutes I was re-booked on that Delta routing, and I was walking over to Terminal 1.
Here's where the deal gets even sweeter. As a courtesy, United (and I believe most other airlines) will grant you original routing credit if you are re-booked due to irregular operations. You'll need to save your original receipt, original boarding passes, and new boarding passes. These need to be mailed into the airline with a letter asking for original routing credit. You can also get credit for your new itinerary on whichever carrier / alliance you like. So in my case, I got my original United miles, and I also credited the Delta miles to my Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan account. NICE!
Just a bit of advice for when it happens to you!
Comments
So is this exclusive to 1Ks only or can even non-status pax do this?
I'm actually not sure what the "official" policy, but my understanding that is if you buy a ticket on UA... and due to their schedule failure, they can't get you there, they need to get you there on another carrier, regardless of status. Anyone else care to chime in?
There used to be a Federal rule known as Rule 240 that required this, with deregulation that went out the window. Nowadays most airlines have some sort of Rule 240 provision in their CoC. UA's provides that they may put a delayed/canceled customer on another airline they have an agreement with (basically everyone except Southwest), but aren't required to do so. While they may be more likely to do it for someone with status or on a more expensive ticket, they will certainly do it for non-status customers as well.
I was on a canceled American Eagle flight to Newark once and they signed the whole plane over to Continental, all 45 people. I was recently flying UA non-stop from MSY to LAX and a bunch of people got signed over from a canceled AA flight through DFW, the captain made a few announcements welcoming them specifically and suggested next time they buy a UA ticket instead.
Do you get ORC if both your original flights and your new flights are on UA? The flights flown are usually what post to the account automatically. How do I give the original boarding passes to prove the original routing? They always take those when they give the new boarding passes.
@ HansNope... if you get rebooked on UA, you don't get double. HOWEVER, let's say you were booked on SFO-LAX-JFK, and somehow UA needs to re-book you on SFO-JFK due to irregular operations, you can request to get the original credit that you booked, just not double.
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