Originally Posted by
Time traveller
I have a Domestic Standard Economy Award seat (YN) booked one-way for 25K miles. Is it possible to waitlist for First Saver (IN) for this flight? When I called UA, the phone rep said I can not. However she said I can continue to check for availability and if IN bcomes available before the flight, I can certainly re-book it in First saver and cancel the Economy Standard award.
Has anyone had experience with a similar situation? I know UA sometimes releases F saver award a few days before the flight, so should I just put in a EF notification for F saver award and wait?
I had a similar situation as yours.
We both booked a circle trip: SEA-IAH-EWR-IAH-SFO (stopover)-SEA for 50,000 miles total in Standard Y Class. Note that they ticketed this with IAH-EWR in IN since it was available at time of ticketing.
The first agent said I cannot waitlist.
I called back and the second one wanted to charge me an additional 5K to waitlist all segments.
The third agent I called a couple weeks before our trip put us on the priority waitlist on all segments in coach (SEA-IAH then EWR-IAH, IAH-SFO, SFO-SEA)
Did any of them clear ahead of time? Yes, the EWR-IAH cleared into IN as we were boarding our SEA-IAH flight. An email was sent stating that our waitlist has cleared.
ALL of the waitlisted segments automatically added us to the Airport UG waitlist.
Position on the UG Airport List, we were pretty much at the top 2 or top 5 on the waitlist on all flights (My friend for UA checked me on the list and it shows us as using upgrades...even though we weren't ...that's why we're on higher priority)
Only the SEA-IAH flight didn't clear since F was full and it was an A319, we ended up in BF for IAH-EWR-IAH-SFO on the B787, and FC on SFO-SEA B739.
All of that for 50,000 miles each. So not a bad deal at all.
***Note that, from my experience, if your waitlist doesn't clear before 24 hours, the waitlist drops off. I had to call for IAH-SFO and SFO-SEA within 24 hours since United released IN seats WITHIN the 24 hours. And, since the waitlist has dropped off, you won't clear automatically...you have to call in to be cleared.
Hope this answers your question.