Question on upgrade availability for Hawaii from ORD vs. IAH
Feb 27, 2015, 2:55 pm
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: DCA/IAD
Programs: UA 1K, HH Diamond, Bonvoy Plat
Posts: 109
Question on upgrade availability for Hawaii from ORD vs. IAH
I am currently waitlisted for an upgrade from ORD to HNL for a flight in August. R is currently 0 on my flight and all C seats are available. I recently looked at IAH to HNL and saw flights with R9 on the same 777 config. also with all seats C shown as available (flights show about the same number total seats booked). My question is, why would IAH flights have R and ORD flights have none. I'm just wondering if R0 from ORD is actually not true and they just haven't opened up any R space yet. Would they really have a different procedure to allocate R at different airports?
Feb 27, 2015, 4:31 pm
#2
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Virginia, USA
Posts: 4,510
It's based on projected demand for those seats. There may be more demand for paid C out of ORD than out of IAH. And there is really no way to predict with certainty whether R will open up on a given flight on a given day.
Feb 27, 2015, 5:11 pm
#3
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Honolulu Harbor
Programs: UA 1K
Posts: 15,024
It's not that simple. IAH-HNL still requires a Premier co-pay for mileage upgrades and is not CPU eligible. Neither these apply to the ORD flight. The co-pay out of Houston made sense when the lie-flat seats were the standard. Now that the plane is the same as the crummy Hawaii 777 used out of Chicago, the upgrade premium and lack of CPUs makes no sense. United is going to treat R release differently on the two flights.
Feb 27, 2015, 5:54 pm
#4
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Virginia, USA
Posts: 4,510
It's not that simple. IAH-HNL still requires a Premier co-pay for mileage upgrades and is not CPU eligible. Neither these apply to the ORD flight. The co-pay out of Houston made sense when the lie-flat seats were the standard. Now that the plane is the same as the crummy Hawaii 777 used out of Chicago, the upgrade premium and lack of CPUs makes no sense. United is going to treat R release differently on the two flights.
Feb 27, 2015, 7:10 pm
#5
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: South Carolina
Programs: UA LT Gold, American Kettle, Hertz #1 Presidents Circle, Marriott LT Platinum
Posts: 927
It's not that simple. IAH-HNL still requires a Premier co-pay for mileage upgrades and is not CPU eligible. Neither these apply to the ORD flight. The co-pay out of Houston made sense when the lie-flat seats were the standard. Now that the plane is the same as the crummy Hawaii 777 used out of Chicago, the upgrade premium and lack of CPUs makes no sense. United is going to treat R release differently on the two flights.
. Thanks for all the replies!