Originally Posted by
skymaster
I am trying to find out the meaning of the various references to cabin and inventory availability (e.g. such notes as "Z", "R9", etc.) that I find in these threads, and their significance when it comes to RPU and booking when you hope to use and RPU or GPU. How do you know what fare class is being offered, or if there are more than one, how you select the one that is likely to get an RPU upgrade, etc. I have had bad luck with RPU and find that when I do get it (I am a 1K) is is often on a flight that is far from full, and where even Golds have been upgraded, so I would have been upgraded without the RPU, but they took it away from me anyway, a waste of a "perk" that I am not sure is worth much in any event.
You need to go to your search preferences and enable Expert Mode (this blog shows you how:
http://boardingarea.com/onemileatati...s-expert-mode/)
And then you can see that Fare Class will change color when you are searching for flights and you can hover over for inventory. To put it short if you are looking to purchase Economy and use a GPU for BusinessFirst you have to purchase the Economy ticket in W fare or higher and want to look for R space being high for the chance of near instant upgrade once you apply the GPU.
Other people here or blogs can explain it better.