United Airlines - please keep checking your reservations!

[philholsha]

Good morning all,

We are due to leave in 7 weeks and this will be the first time we have flown indirect and the first time with United.

On Saturday something made me check our flight reservations and our connecting flight had been brought forward by 2 hours leaving 52 minutes to land, go through immigration, get bags, recheck bags etc etc.

I spoke to United who have amended our flight without any problems and we now go via O'Hare rather than Dulles so all is good however it could have been a different story had I not checked!

So, if there are any newbies trying indirect it might be worth checking every now and then that all is ok with your flights and they have not been amended/updated.

 

[chmurf]

If you have booked direct with united (or any other airline) and provided a valid email, such changes will be notified to you via email as soon as the change takes place

if you book through a TA, or online ticket broker, you may not be notified. And it's often a pain to have things sorted.

Those changes are very frequent and happen with all airlines.

As long as it's the airline changing the itinerary, or flight times by a sizeable amount, the airline will allow you to change your itinerary, free of charge, even if your ticket is non exchangeable, non refundable.

Basic advice is to check the itinerary every week.

Another good advice would be to register on CheckMyTrip ( https://www.checkmytrip.com/ ) or Sabre, or any other Flight management website.

 

[2Tiggies]

Thanks for the heads up. It's always a good thing to periodically check reservations in case of changes. As Chmurf said, they are usually pretty good at letting you know.

I sat puzzled on more than one occasion 2 years ago after emails from United notifying me of a change - in each case it was a one or two minute change so I just kept missing it. If you are arriving at EWR before early afternoon there are several more flights out to MCO so I tend not to fret it as they will get you onto the next flight. We missed ours coming back from MCO to EWR and they shuffled things around and even held the flight at EWR and 'escorted us' through some back corridors to get us on there. Nonetheless, emails can end up in spam and lost in cyberspace so always a good idea to check

 

[jockey]

Thanks for the nfo..at the moment we have 3 hours connection as we like to get food.....!

 

[2Tiggies]

Thanks for the nfo..at the moment we have 3 hours connection as we like to get food.....!

You'll be more than fine with that. We had 1 hour 29 minutes and easily cleared security, collected our luggage and dropped it off again, somebody (not saying who ) went outside and had a couple of cigarettes and a coffee, we went through security again for our connecting flight and then had time to get something to eat and drink for while we waited at the gate.

 

[Clare D]

We flew with United on the 14/08 from LHR-Chicago (O'hare) - Orlando and booked it with E-Bookers.

I had an e-mail from EB a couple of months before we flew to notify me of a change but it was only a couple of minutes on a 4 hour lay over. This was fine.

However, on the 12/08 I had an e-mail from them to notify me of a layover change on our return flight which was MCO - Houston - LHR and this had been reduced from 1 hr and 25 mins to just 42 mins. I called them straight away and said I was concerned that even if we made it our luggage may not and also the fact that if Orlando for some reason was closed (due to weather) we could miss our connecting flight. She was great and got me on an earlier flight. It wasn't ideal as it meant that the layover was 4 hours with a 10 hour flight but it gave us peace of mind.

The only problem we had at O'Hare was the queue for security for our connecting flight. Only 2 security points manned and there was a queue for premium United passengers that was merging right to the front of our queue after we had been stood there for over 45 mins and a similar thing in MCO. We cleared passport control to join a queue that hardly moved with other passport control lines merging into it. It was a joke as again only 2 security points were manned with 2 lines of people trying to get through and the other line was where wheelchairs and pushchairs were having to go through scanners too. I'm all for strict security but with the volume of people coming through they need to get more staff to open the security check points up.

Other than that no problems at all with United.

 

[philholsha]

If you have booked direct with united (or any other airline) and provided a valid email, such changes will be notified to you via email as soon as the change takes place

if you book through a TA, or online ticket broker, you may not be notified. And it's often a pain to have things sorted.

Those changes are very frequent and happen with all airlines.

As long as it's the airline changing the itinerary, or flight times by a sizeable amount, the airline will allow you to change your itinerary, free of charge, even if your ticket is non exchangeable, non refundable.

Basic advice is to check the itinerary every week.

Another good advice would be to register on CheckMyTrip ( https://www.checkmytrip.com/ ) or Sabre, or any other Flight management website.

Thank you for the info for checkmytrip, I had no idea this existed.

We never had emails from United hence why I put a message on here (and yes they do have my email as I've received my flight confirmations). I just assumed that an email would be the case if they were changed but maybe not always! I just wanted to let people know not to panic or worry because so far United customer service has been excellent and helpful.