Originally Posted by
mitchmu
I just had an interesting experience.
Upcoming flight XXX-YYY-ZZZ.
At time of booking, R was open XXX-YYY but not YYY-ZZZ.
XXX-YYY is 45 minutes and YYY-ZZZ is 4-5 hours.
I didn't want to burn the RPU for 45 minutes and the site would not allow me to apply it to the 4-5 hour segment only and I was afraid to call in and let an agent touch my record, so I didn't apply the RPU. Instead, I used EF to set an alert for R space on YYY-ZZZ.
Today, EF told me that R=1 on YYY-ZZZ so I logged in to UA.COM, applied the RPU, and cleared into F on YYY-ZZZ. Now, waitlisted on XXX-YYY but don't care as it's so short.
I wonder if this counts as a queue-jumping behavior because I did something the site allowed me to, rather than asking an agent to do anything special as a manual process. I also wonder if this isn't possibly an even better process for securing an upgrade than wait-listing. EF works. Clearing into R on the web site works when R > 0. It's not clear to me that wait-list sweeps work consistently or properly.
Nothing wrong with exploiting UA's broken upgrade system to your advantage.
In theory R should never be greater than zero as long as there are people on the waitlist. As the inventory is released it should be assigned to the waitlist *immediately* and in order. Unfortunately we know UA's systems don't normally do this so if you get the EF alert (which doesn't check every minute, btw) then call or use the website and get the upgrade. It's your's for the taking when you apply the upgrade instrument.
-RM