Is this "normal"?
17 years with United, mix of 1k and GS. 1k now. Somewhere between 2m and 3m lifetime miles.
I used to go out of my way to fly United (e.g., fly NRT-SFO-SEA on UA instead of NRT-SEA on ANA), but no more.
Most of my tickets are RW, in business class. GPUs cannot be used on those anymore, hence useless to me.
My question - maybe some speculative answers...
Booked SEA-ORD-SEA flight, 3 months ago. About $500, T-class. Departure is next Friday. Immediately applied RPUs, and waitlisted since. In July, all 1st class seats seemed available (using seatmap as an imperfect proxy), and every week a few disappeared.
No choice re. flights, since I have connections. Early am flight out of SEA.
Is it "normal"/expected to have that many 1st class seats gone so soon? I suspect they must be $-upgrades at booking?
I just checked again. There is one 1st class seat left. $587. Economy is $488. If that delta has been in place since I booked, I just answered my own question.
Oh - I can also upgrade for $1,211 right now (just the outbound, return can be upgraded for $485). I guess that is why I am "leaving United".
Note - I am not familiar with all the details of checking upgradable space, calling in for manual upgrades etc., so maybe I could have done something differently.
(return flight on 10-26 has open FC space, but shows same effect - goes down every week)