Originally Posted by Montreal

Hi,

I paid several hundred dollars more to book a W class return ticket to HKG rather than cheaper class fares. When I applied the SWU, the upgrade went into waitlisted category for flight UA 869 from SFO to HKG on Sep 16 at 1:00 pm and return flight UA 862 from HKG to SFO on Sep 30 at 11:30 am.

This was over a month ago and since then everyday I check the business class seat map on these flights to see how the seats are changing. It has been pretty constant at 24 seats unsold on the first flight and 26 seats left on the second. But for the past one week a strange thing has been happening - flight 862 does not appear when you try to book either a business or a first class ticket for Sep 30 (system says "Sorry no direct flights are available"). However, it does appear when you try to book an economy class ticket and that's how I toggle to see the business class seat map and there are still the same 26 seats open. So if there are so many business/first seats unsold why is United making it unavailable/blocking for sale? The flight appears when you search either a day before or after or any other date but Fri, Sep 30. Is it a system glitch or is United deliberately blocking it as there might be a large Chinese delegation expected to fly on that date?