Originally Posted by ljwobker

I've failed maybe one or two SWU's when travelling on a B fare. One was ORD-HKG and the other was IAD-DXB. These are both notoriously hard-to-upgrade routes (and correspondingly massive revenue/profit generators for UA)



If that's what is happening, that is *precisely* what United wants. From the airline's perspective, they basically want to use the different fare buckets as a way for people to "bid up" to what they are willing to pay for a premium seat.

As business travel loads at the moment are relatively strong, seeing more people willing to pay higher fares makes sense... if the economy (well, specifically the market for premium seats) softens, then you'll see the 'average fare that's high enough to clear an upgrade' go down.

At some point it's just economics... you can think of it as a blind auction: individuals don't have total visibility into what everyone else is bidding, so if you really want to make sure you're gonna get that premium seat, you either actually pay F/A/C/D/Z fares to guarantee one, or you pay high economy fares to improve your chances.