Best way to find R (GPU) inventory over a period of time?
May 18, 2012, 12:50 pm
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Scottsdale, AZ
Programs: AA EXP, SPG Plat
Posts: 1,472
Best way to find R (GPU) inventory over a period of time?
I booked a flight a while back with existing R inventory so that I was immediately able to apply my GPUs and get confirmed upgrades.
Unfortunately I need to change the dates, but I am also open to changing destinations (This is a leisure trip).
I have paid access to expert flyer, and my thought is to create a spreadsheet between all US / Europe destinations and then do mass queries with the +/- 3 days option in order to see what is available to me.
This will likely take a few hours... Is there any way to automate this or run a better query like "Tell me which dates have R inventory >=2 from 7/1/2012 to 12/1/2012 with the destination city MUC"
Most queries I do end up with 0 inventory
Unfortunately I need to change the dates, but I am also open to changing destinations (This is a leisure trip).
I have paid access to expert flyer, and my thought is to create a spreadsheet between all US / Europe destinations and then do mass queries with the +/- 3 days option in order to see what is available to me.
This will likely take a few hours... Is there any way to automate this or run a better query like "Tell me which dates have R inventory >=2 from 7/1/2012 to 12/1/2012 with the destination city MUC"
Most queries I do end up with 0 inventory
May 18, 2012, 1:07 pm
#2
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: LHR (sometimes CLE, SFO, BOS, LAX, SEA)
Programs: UA 1K
Posts: 5,893
Some things to consider:
If your travel is very open ended, you should have absolutely no difficulty finding R inventory this far out.
- To find "R" availability quickly, you can do a search on united.com for a flight, then click "fare class" to see fare class availability.
- Queries directly against united.com take 10-40 seconds.
- R inventory is shown with restrictive married-segment logic. The only way to know for sure that there is R availability on an international flight is to check the nonstop.
As a concrete example: suppose IAD-FRA is R1 and all daily ORD-IAD flights are R0. If you search for ORD-FRA, you will find some ORD-FRA nonstops and also some connections like ORD-IAD-FRA. If you click on "fare class" to see fare class availability for IAD-FRA, you will see "R0" because the first segment is R0 and the availability is shown married-segment style. You will only know for sure that upgrade availability is there if you search for the nonstop. - Supposing that you're just trying to get to Europe in business class, and don't mind taking a connecting flight / train once you've crossed the ocean, there are about 46 city pairs to check for eastbound travel on a given day. The current list is:
EWR-AMS/ARN/BCN/BER/BFS/BHX/BRU/CPH/DUB/EDI/FCO/FRA/GLA/GVA/HAM/LHR/LIS/MAD/MAN/MUC/MXP/OSL/SNN/STR/ZRH
IAD-AMS/BRU/DUB/FCO/FRA/GVA/LHR/MAN/MUC/ZRH
IAH-AMS/FRA/LHR
LAX-LHR
ORD-AMS/BRU/FRA/LHR/MUC
SFO-FRA/LHR
You'll want to double-check this list for travel in the future; there are new and seasonal routes like EWR-IST.
Some interesting routes are the ones where you can sometimes find the 747 upper-deck experience (ORD-FRA, SFO-FRA, seasonally SFO-LHR) and the longhaul routes out of IAH/LAX/SFO. - Note that if you're scripting the search (straightforward with a library like Mechanize), it pessimally will take up to 30 minutes per day you check … so you'll need to narrow down either the days you're willing to travel or the flights you'd like to be on.
- There is usually at least R1 space available for random dates in the future. Be creative. Travel in the immediate future is a little trickier; for example, I've been watching June 22 carefully for a few weeks and 75% of the time every possible westbound tatl is R0. The other 25% of the time there's been space in weird places in the system, for example R1 on GVA-IAD and R3 on EDI-EWR.
- If you MUST fly somewhere without finding R space, consider looking for R inventory at the very last minute that might be available for same-day confirmed change poaching. I looked yesterday and saw several westbound tatl flights on Friday which had R1 through R3 inventory. Several of them were sold close to full (47/50 or higher). Sadly, two had positive R inventory with people on the upgrade waitlist who were not on the coach standby waitlist. One could have SDC'd onto any one of those flights, then called and applied a GPU (possibly short-circuiting anyone on a waitlist).
If your travel is very open ended, you should have absolutely no difficulty finding R inventory this far out.
May 18, 2012, 1:24 pm
#3
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Scottsdale, AZ
Programs: AA EXP, SPG Plat
Posts: 1,472
Thanks - those city pairs really help as I was staring at the route maps. If I can script something like this together then I'll publish the results (even though they would only be accurate at that point in time)
May 18, 2012, 1:50 pm
#4
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I would also think with the loss of bmi, the EDI/BFS/GLA routes might be less likely to provide good ongoing *A connections.