Originally Posted by
mmack
I usually NEVER buy international tickets unless I can confirm our UG with GPU at booking. This time we have to fly on fixed dates, and as I can confirm the UG from SYD to SFO, I've elected to buy the tickets and waitlist the upgrade SFO-SYD. Its a Thursday in September 2018, and there are only 2 seats taken in C as of to-day .Do you think this will clear? My fallback is to actually BUY up to C if it looks like it will not clear, but thinking this is about 10 months in advance it should clear? I know SFO-SYD is tough
What do you guys/gals think?
“10 months in advance” doesn’t mean much in this context. It does control your position on the waitlist, vis-a-vis passengers who are in the same fare class as you, but that’s all. Most business travel is planned within about 2 weeks of departure, with the exception of conferences and the like.
I don’t know much about pricing on US-Australia, but what I would do is go ahead and keep your waitlist for now and keep an eye on both the load and the price of a P fare. You shouldn’t need to pay a change fee to move to business class on the same flight (refer to GG BUYUP if the agent talks about a fee). If a fare sale comes up, go for it; otherwise, I’d continue to wait. I believe that UA has some 150-day advance purchase P fares; 50- and 30- day fares are also common. So, those are probably your decision points; read the advance purchase rules on the current fare and you’ll get an idea of when the price is likely to escalate. (Of course, they can pull a fare at any time, and they can choose to limit P inventory at their leisure — but you’re already gambling by waitlisting an instrument...
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If you’re feeling lucky — or if load stays low — you can take it all the way to the gate with the hope of a buy-up offer. If you search the buy-up thread, I expect you’ll be able to find some examples of what those cost (assuming your GPU doesn’t look likely to clear, that is).