Originally Posted by
jsloan
They may re-open business class awards, so you should keep an eye open. Whether or not you can upgrade an partner award ticket for an SAS flight with cash is a question for their forum. The answer here is "UA can't; maybe SAS can." (If they do re-open the awards, you can call UA and switch by paying the appropriate award change fee for your status level).
I spoke to SAS and they told me a non-revenue ticket cannot be upgraded with cash, only points, be it originally booked with UA miles or SAS miles.