Questions and Answers

Booked a domestic nonstop flight on UA for around 6pm this weekend, and want to change to an earlier flight that day. Don’t have any status. Is there a way to do that for free or am I stuck paying the $75 same-day change fee?

What if I had my family member (who’s Premier Platinum) call their hotline on my behalf? Any hopes of getting the fee waived?

You could try the family member route but unless they booked the ticket for you I don’t think you’re going to have much luck. Just balance out how much getting home earlier is worth to you compared to the $75. There have definitely been days for me where it would have been worth it.

Has there been ANY schedule change regarding your flight? If there was, and it was over 1 hour for instance, then they would be much more willing to accommodate you. Just recently when we flew from LGA to BNA after an international flight back to the US, we got to LGA 6 hours before our scheduled flight, and asked the AA agent whether we could take an earlier flight. She said no, unless we were willing to pay, but then she proactively looked at our reservation, and said: “Oh you had a schedule change several months ago”. I said yes, and that is why we were booked on a later flight. So she immediately put us (3 people) on the next flight. So I would check it.

You could also go to the airport early and see if the gate agent will accommodate you. YMMV.

Unfortunately there hasn’t been any schedule change even by a minute. I checked the email receipt from a few months ago to the current flight states on united.com.

I guess I could try getting to the airport early, but I’m worried the agent would try to charge me the $75 fee, which I’d rather not pay at this point, and then I’d be stuck at the airport with nothing to do for a while. I checked Expert Mode for my flight and there are 9 seats in Y, M, B…so looks like it’s not oversold.

I’ll try having the Gold member call and see if that works. Would it be best to do that within 24 hours of flight departure (so it could be considered a waiver of the Same-Day Change fee) or now?

Thanks everyone for the help – I really appreciate it.