United’s Mobile App Now Automatically Reassigns Preferred Seats When Available

Changing seats for free

In March,

United Airlines

announced a new feature to its app that, at first, was only available to a limited number of people. The new feature notifies passengers if their preferred seat becomes available after booking and even rebooks passengers automatically. Since rolling the feature out and testing it, United has made it available to all passengers.

According to an announcement earlier today, the Chicago-based airline was able to automatically change seats for more than 18,000 passengers last month. This represented almost 40% of eligible passengers, within the same class of service. As of now, the feature only works in the airline’s mobile app, where passengers can select their seat preference. If a preferred seat becomes available, it will be changed and United will notify the passenger.

Photo: United Airlines

The process is simple:

• Request your desired seat in the mobile app if your preferred seat type isn’t available at the time of booking your flight.
• Select where you’d like to sit, including preferences for window or aisle seats, exit rows or bulkhead seats.
• Get automatically assigned and notified about your new seat assignment if your preferred choice becomes available.

Photo: United Airlines

Other app changes

Early last month, United continued to solidify its app as the best airline app in the world. The airline announced that if a flight would be affected by weather, it would

text live radar maps to passengers and also make those available in the app

. This was to reduce confusion when delaying a flight due to weather when the origin or destination has no inclement weather.

To make this happen, United created a dedicated customer service team to handle these updates. This team works with the flight operations teams in the operation centers and uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) data to track and predict flight data. The same maps can be found in the app’s flight status section.

Photo: United Airlines

Just over one year ago, United announced a feature that would allow passengers to

rebook their flights through the app in case of disruptions

. Testing on the feature was launched at the end of 2022 and took about six months to become available to all passengers. But the feature goes far beyond just rebooking; passengers in applicable situations can also choose their hotels, and get meal and transportation vouchers.

During the testing phase, United discovered that about half of affected passengers naturally turned to the app and website to solve their problems. Airport staff gave positive feedback and highlighted the shorter lines. This change eventually led to United removing customer service centers from its hubs, pushing customers to use the app and to use their agent on-demand (AoD) feature.

United’s Chief Customer Officer, Linda Jojo, said,

“Our new mobile app feature offers more transparency, saves time and reduces stress for our customers, and it shortens lines at customer service desks so our employees can better assist passengers with complex issues or questions. Plus, it’s another example of United’s continued investment in new technology and tools.”