Coming off United Premier Status - Will I Lose my Economy Plus Seats?
 

I have reserved domestic flights for July of this year on United. We were automatically given the option to choose Economy Plus seats, which I did. I will be coming off Premier status later this quarter. Will I lose the upgraded seats?

yes esp if the flight is not till July. They do regular "sweeps" of the seats and esp with a to of people in your situation, beginning on Mar 4 I'm sure they will be checking to make sure everyone on an E+ seat has either paid for it or has status.
They may offer you to purchase E+ for the flight - at least that's what I would do in their shoes.

I haven't been in this situation, so no personal experience, but this is a very common question on flyertalk--comes up a lot around the beginning of every year. From what I've read in the past, people's experiences are all over the board; some seat assignments stick and some don't. You might try searching the UA board on something like "lose status." Whatever the "policy," I'm pretty sure I wouldn't trust the systems to be consistent--particularly with all of the schedule changes going on.

Airlines don't necessarily do "regular" sweeps, but when there's any equipment, schedule, or simply a flight number change, they will have to "resassign" seats. And you will be swept out, since E+ is not really a service class, but mainly a perk for elite members when flying.

With the merger, many things can happen between now and July, so your chances of keeping your E+ seats are not very good. Just don't do anything to your reservations and hope for the best.

Of course things are always changing, but I had this situation a couple of years ago. At the time, I was told that what governed was your status at the time you bought the ticket, not at the time you actually flew.

Like I said though - this was a couple of years ago.

Craig, if you look on flyertalk there is a discussion of this very topic. I wish I could link up a thread for you. The thought seems to be that 'no' you won't lose your seats. Just don't go in AFTER March 3rd (link-up time for UA/CO) and try to CHANGE them. Stick to the seats you have, and you should be OK. One person seemed to think that any tickets purchased prior to the link-up date would be able to keep seats....

I've not been in this situation, but hope this works out for you.

Carol

what simpsonc is reporting is only half right....there have been many cases of people losing status before the merger - many people go from Premier to no status, the merger has almost nothing to do with it.

What will matter, and why it is less than likely that you will keep the E+ seats, is that between now and July there will likely be schedule changes or equipment changes that would affect your E+. If UA goes into the record for any reason, they will see you are no longer entitled to E+ seats and move you.

What makes it MORE likely that this will happen with the merger is that a lot of people will be losing status in March instead of February so if the are "smart" they will do a sweep then and ask passengers to pony up the $$ for E+. But that's just a guess AND not the most likely scenario

As others have said, don't call or email or try to change seats and you may keep them but it is less than likely with all the other changes going on.

I think I saw the same flytertalk thread that Carol is referring. There is another thread where a poster referred to info provided by UA Insider and implied that the former-silvers wouldn't be "swept" out of E+ but I could not find the relevant post by UA Insider.

Guess I'll just have to check my itinerary from time to time after the merger to see if I need to pay for an upgrade...

I certainly won't try and change anything (but I knew that already).

Just wanted to report back that out of 5 legs of our itinerary, 4 were in Economy Plus. The one that wasn't was due to a schedule change, so it all worked out well.

Great! Glad to hear it, Craig.