jasonvr

First, what browser are you using? Have you selected the number of passengers in the drop down? I only see a place to enter names once I select the number of passengers on IE.

Edited: Seems broken on Firefox. The dropdown does nothing there.

Edited again: What's amusing is that this is stated list of compatible browsers:
The United Airlines web site is best accessed with one of the following web browsers:

* Mozilla/Firefox 1.0 or newer
* Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or newer
* AOL 9 or newer
* Safari 1.2 or newer (Macintosh)

Liars!

jsgoldbe

OK, so it's not just me. Whew. (Using Firefox 1.5, BTW. Looks broken according to post above.)

UAL: What I would REALLY like to know if there is *A upgrade space available BEFORE I buy the ticket. Is this just another case of having to call one of the costly human beings in a call center and pester them immediately prior to booking on the .bomb to save the fee?

mahasamatman

Shortly being next week - July 24, 2006.

UA 100K

Has anyone able to use it online. I am trying to upgrade a LH to F but everytime it tells me that they can not find my booking. I called UA but they told me that they are going to send me a paper vouncher. that does not sound correct. who should i call to resolve it - it does not them that 1K desk is able to handle it?

Thanks

tods27

Note that they have posted on almost every page that LH will not be available via the web until July 24th. They may need to send you a voucher (old method) until then. You might consider waiting until next week to request the upgrade.

gnaget

They haven't considered fare classes between Y and B. For example, SAS has S class, which is a premium economy class (along with Y), which is above B in the pecking order.

I am sure that there are other examples like this.........

Dub

Anyone know the answer to this?? It's the most important issue.

TerryK

You'll need to call and you'll likely to be disappointed. Most upgrade inventories are released close to departure which may be too late to ticket your paid fare.

This new feature, while an improvement, is of very limited value with the restriction of CDYB and no waitlisting. Also, what's available to UA is a subset of what's available to the airlines' own members.

tods27

While I agree that the lack of waitlisting and CDYB limitations make this less useful, I'm not sure about the subset comment. Most airlines only have one inventory bucket for upgrades and I am not sure that their systems could differentiate seats for *A upgrades and their own upgrades. Consider that when UA had special 1K award inventory, they actually had a separate inventory bucket. Now, it could be like the award situation for *A that does seem to limit awards based on carrier, but nobody has actually confirmed this from a reliable source. The upgrades may work off *Net and that could potentially limit the upgrades using MP miles on some carriers (while the carrier allows their own members to upgrade). Bottom line is that you are assuming the upgrade inventory for *A awards is separate from the airlines' own members.

TerryK

Yes, I assume so. There has been a lot of comments about UA getting less allocation than the other airlines for free *A inventory. Most *A airlines use the same buckets (O/I) for free and upgrade inventory.

kevinsac

Is that true??? I have wanted to get two F/C awards using Mileage Plus (I think it was LH flights) but could only book one. But, in calling US Dividend Miles, they could book an additional seat for me. So, I got the two FC awards, but using two diff programs.

TerryK

Yes, this is an example of UA getting less than full allocation of the O class seats.

roberto99

This confirms my theory that UA only offers a subset of what the other *A carriers offer.

Morrissey

How can you draw that conclusion? What if UA had been allocated 2 seats, and someone else already took the other one? Despite plenty of anecdotal evidence presented in the UA forum, there is a lot that none of us know about how the award system really works.

flysurfer

True, but it helps to use deductive thinking. Since award inventories are can be accessed by almost any GDS (you just have to know how to do it), there's one single inventory for X, I and O class for each flight of each *A airline. However, UA MP isn't using a GDS for award reservations, they are using a customized *Net program version to access this inventory. And quite obviously, as shown by heaps of anecdotal evidence, this program has some kind of filter that prevents MP members to book (or even see) certain award seats or award flights. Some flights won't even show up at all. That means that the filtering is done at UA. In fact, UA could manually access and book any award seat shown in the GDS by using a longsell, but, as stated by several posters, they "aren't allowed to do that, anymore". Well, guess what? LH M&M agents will happily do a longsell in cases their *Net version acts up. Conclusion: UA is trying to reduce award inventory on non-UA metal. Which, btw, is the only scenario that makes commercial sense, anyway, as UA has to pay a premium for non-UA award seats, while the other *A carriers would certainly be happy to take UA's money in exchange for giving away an award seat.