cjermain

I know there is a big thread on auto-splitting in the context of upgrades, so mods, feel free to move this, but I think this may be different enough for a new thread...

Anyway, this morning I did a search for a same day change. My wife, son, and I have a reservation together, leaving tomorrow morning. I have a pet attached to my ticket. On UA.com, I chose to search for a new flight for me and my son. Then, while I was searching---I had not agreed to any changes---I received an email from UA with a new reservation for myself... I had been split off and my wife and son are still together. Upgrades don't appear to have anything to do with it. We are all in economy still. This is seriously annoying for a number of reasons.

The only reasonable explanation is that this happened in response to my initiating a search for a SDC. Otherwise, this is just too much of a coincidence. I wonder if the pet had something to do with it? Is there anything that can be done to glue me back with my son? Argh...

DELee

Yup. This happened to me too last weekend - no dog or kid though. Would be good to see if the change search instability is tied to the weekend schedule change loadings

David

LASUA1K

I also had this issue. Very annoying and I’m checking the reservations daily to make sure the seats arent changed.

WineCountryUA

To do the search, if not all on the same PNR are included, the PNR will be split. Since you were looking for flights for just 2, not 3, the system needed to split the PNR. Understand you were just exploring options but that is the nature of PNRs -- you either take the same action (appears that includes speculative searches) on the PNR or it will be split.

cjermain

Big problem with this: why was I the only one who was split off? The search was for me and my son. This defies any sort of reasonable explanation, since it would mean that doing the search actually causes an action that makes the change impossible (me and my son are magically on different reservations, and he's left with my wife, so we can't make the change anyway).

Just saw your post. Seems identical to what happened to us.

Aside from all of that, it is not acceptable that a search alters a reservation in such a substantial way, without at least a warning. I understand that to make the change we'd have to split PNRs, but few users would expect that a search would split PNRs, especially in such a messed up way.

WineCountryUA

When doing the change process, you are asked which passengers to include, could you have just selected only yourself

cjermain

It's always possible to make an error, but in this case, the fares quoted were for two passengers, so I could not have just selected myself. There is a small chance that I could have selected my wife and son, I suppose, but it seems just as inexplicable that it would kick the person off of the PNR who was not changing his flight.

sfo789

That's actually the behaviour I'm used to -- the pax changing their itin keeps the PNR, the pax who stay on the original itin get a new PNR.

Concur with WineCountryUA that the "change flights" tool is incredibly buggy and generally best to avoid if you can.

sexykitten7

I don't think @WineCountryUA was implying that you made an error. They're saying you meant to select AB, you correctly selected AB, and UA split off A just because they have awful IT.

HeadInTheClouds

spin88

Whether for one or two or everyone, there is NO excuse for IT that makes changes to people's reservations w/o their approval like this. This is just bad. There is no reason for such a system other than - just speculating - United's ongoing use of a 30 year old computer system with horrible functionality, all the result of reservation system being Smisiked to save $15M/month.

It is not unreasonable for people to expect that if they check options - something UA offers - it will not dump their old flights/seats. It is also predictable that people whose resevations were changed would be POed. I certainly use the DL app all the time to check options, never had this happen.... And now I am wondering if this was the cause of my reservations with two kids being split the other day, requiring me to stand in line. It did not change my flights, but the system did split us up (although pehaps this was the upgrade system).

Whatever the cause, it is something a decent customer service focused airline would have fixed a long time ago.

emcampbe

Most carriers, except for ones that are brand new, are using really old computer systems, with new overlays on top. Not unique to UA at all. So yeah, these issues tend to happen more often.

As as for the splitting, while I ageee it’s not ideal
at all, one could argue that even when searching using change flights, the intention is to make a change which will split in the end. I’d be unsurprised if the change flights tool can’t actually return the search query without the proper number of people in the PNR, requiring the split.

Not saying the OP did it internationally, but willing to bet they selected the wrong individuals, hence the split of the wrong people. I’m not saying this was intentional on OPs part, but in my experience supporting web sites, including those requiring logins for individual accounts, the errors like this that happened were always some sort of user error. A lot of it was unintentional, for sure, but was still in the end a user error and not the system - some of it really little - like confusing a dash (-) with an underscore (_) in their password which obviously wouldn’t let them access their account, or not reading simple step-by-step instructions to access what they needed.

On the other hand, for UA, I always, rather then using the change flights tool, just price out new flights, at least first. That avoids another big issue with the change tool, where it often inflated the prices for changing an itin vs. a new one, not to mention it often brings up more options. Then you know the base and can use the change flights tool to complete the change if it works, or call in and feed the info. to an agent.