love_to_travel

Wow that was cool of you. I did something similar for a EWR-HNL flight. My friend was in the first row of coach right after BF section of the plane where I was. I switched seats with him right after I got done eating my sundae. He got the freshly baked cookie though

craz

+1 it wasnt the OPs fault, but COdbaUA. In the Big pic I dont care if that GS was on a W and it was the least expensive of all those on the WL, as GS they should have gotten it since in the Big Pic that GS spends alot more $$$ at COdbaUA then a non-GS

For the record I am not a GS and never will be 1

unhappyflyer

This issue is getting posted about every three hours in different threads. Here is my toughts:

Ive seen a variation of this theme open every day for the last week but it gets merged into other threads. I posted same after last week hkg ord. It appears that for the most part before the 24 hour window, r Is usually 0. immediatley after the 24 hr window r > 0, However the system does not clear from the airport standbye list. If you call in some agents will process (happenednfor me) and some will say they have been instructed not to. But it is clear the proper priority is alll messed up because almost invariably r quickly goes to 0 and people already on the airport stabdbye list end up waitimg for no shows regardless of status. Because these threads keep getting burried, I have not seen a proper answer on what is actually supposed to happen by policy or if united is listing this as a bug to get fixed. Im guessing that the system simply doesnt clear from the airport list which is why the new policy you cannot request an instrument upgrade past t24. in theory if you could not request a new upgrade, and nobody could call in to get one of the newly opened seats, the system would still resolve properly at the airport. If this is really the policy then they shoulld simply keep r at 0 at T24 and let the airport handle. Also for less than t24 the system appears to only handle upgrades at sweep intervals.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...d-cr1-swu.html

electroflyer

Update: It is T-15 minutes until the scheduled flight time. System is showing F booked full but only 15 out of 16 checked in to 1st. No one is allowed to check in as late as 15 minutes before flight time, right? Thus, there should be 1 seat free in 1st.

But, no upgrade for the first in line on the upgrade standby list.

SFO777

Kudos for being proactive. AA has had similar issues for years. Essentially, he who has an EF Alert and speed dial frequently jumps the queue and gets the upgrade.

unhappyflyer

Same issue again in thread below. These all need to be merged into one sticky thread that says, Upgrades Not Processing Correctly at T-24 to Airport control.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...l#post18320123

electroflyer

In this case, I think it would be beneficial to have them show up as separate threads so hopefully UAInsider can see the magnitude of the problem. When they are all merged into 1 thread, it is hard to see how many different people are having this issue, as it is just a long list of discussion posts interspersed with an occasional hard data point with full details.

sakaike

Thanks for the replies.

As noted by another poster, the GS was definitely not upset with me. And made a point of telling me that any of his attempts to get his upgrade would not impact the fact that I had already received mine. He was upset with the inconsistency, as most of you have pointed out.

I also believe with some posters above that the root of this problem (that I admittedly benefited from) has to be something going on between the handover from Inventory Management to Airport Control at the T-24 hour timeframe.

So I think I have the answer to my first question: Yes, I did steal that seat. But no one has yet responded to my second question, which is whether or not there is a special priority standby list for GS that is not visible to us regular folk on the UA PDA site.

Any thoughts or experience with that one? Or was the GS CSR just making stuff up?

flyer215

Could've been referring to the FFCC list, processed ahead of all upgrades. This is the same list you (are supposed to) end up on if you've paid ($ or award) for a certain cabin, but only have a seat in a lower cabin.

SEA1K4EVR

FFCC is a PMUA term from Apollo. Who knows if such a list even exists now. Probably in some form, but I doubt it's called FFCC. Perhaps one of our resident GA's can shed some light..

I must say I'm getting a little nervous about UA1072 tomorrow 4/3 SEA-EWR redeye departing at 10:51pm. I've been waitlisted for an upgrade with a GPU since booking ~2 weeks ago.. it's the first segment of a trip to HKG.

The flight is R0 (I have an ExpertFlyer alert set).. and F4..it's gone down to F2 and then back up to F5 over the past few days. I guess if R class doesn't appear before this evening I'm going to be at the mercy of the waitlist at the airport tomorrow.. and judging by what others have said I may or not even appear on that list even though I should be pretty high up as a 1K using an instrument. I'm also concerned that the system will skip over my waitlisted upgrade and process CPU's tonight at the 24 hour mark.. I sure hope that doesn't happen!

I assume that if R class opens during the day tomorrow I won't be able to get it manually cleared because it's inside 24 hours? Or can I since the GPU has already been applied?

sakaike

See my post #41 above. Received my EF alert at T-22, called in and apparently jumped to the front of the priority list. Although this is not how things are supposed to work, it's every man/woman for themselves out there. Consequently, you might be in a position to attempt to pull the same trick tomorrow. Good luck.

electroflyer

Another update on the IAH-DCA flight I've been talking about in this thread.

Now, instead of complaining about the upgrade situation being FUBAR, I'm going to complain about the flight takeoff time. It is now T+108 minutes (yes, +) and the flight still hasn't taken off. It pulled away from the gate at about T+43 minutes (no explanation given for the delay, but hey, pulling away from the gate counts as 'departed' in the airline's and the FAA's books, so chalk one up to them for not being super 'late' on departure...*cough*) and is now supposedly waiting on "other planes to take off" before it can actually get airborne. This despite there being no adverse weather at IAH.

SEA1K4EVR

This is not UA's fault.. from fly.faa.gov.. IAH current has a red dot with the following alert:

General Departure Delays: Due to TM Initiatives:MIT:WX, traffic is experiencing Gate Hold and Taxi delays between 46 minutes and 1 hour in length and increasing.

RedEyeDelight

....meanwhile.... our AA EXP brethren is able to use 8 SWUs on a single trip on AA's longest flight:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/17779366-post8.html

Disclaimer: I can't confirm that ReaFan's SWUs cleared, but it seems like they did based on the poster's verbage.

redwoman

Did you apply the GPUs online after your res ticketed, by clicking on the "upgrade this reservation" button, or did you call in and have an agent apply them? I'm looking at an itin for 2 travelers for later in the summer that has plenty of RN/R space available on all segments (R/RN=4-7). To make sure the we snag 'em now I want to know whether it's trustworthy to use the button on the website or call in. FWIW I always called in for all upgrades PMUA; I didn't trust the website not to do something funky to my reservation.