Originally Posted by
smiles33
- I already confirmed that the upgrade to J for miles plus co-pay is available immediately at booking for SFO-NRT for 4 passengers (a Thursday morning flight). Unfortunately, going onto the waitlist is the only option for the miles+ co-pay upgrade for the return red-eye flight on a Saturday. That's the flight I want the lie-flat seats for! It would be about $1900/person for a round-trip economy ticket + $3600 and 240K miles ($450/person each way + 30K miles/person each way). This is the option I assume I'm going to do.
$1900 per person for economy? SFO-TYO RT? I notice you mention that you want to return from Haneda. Do you have any flexibility? Dates? Adding a connection? How far away is travel? Are you traveling at a peak period?
Originally Posted by
smiles33
What would you do? Is it nearly impossible for 4 non-status passengers to get upgraded to J on a Saturday HND-SFO flight?
I'd wait while checking alternatives. Saturday flights are difficult to upgrade, yes.
You mentioned Premium Plus (PE / "P+"), but now you're mentioning HND. I don't believe UA is selling P+ on HND-SFO. That's currently operated by a 787-9, and those are the last planes that are scheduled to have P+ added. The reason that I ask is that UA has stated that people upgrading from P+ to J will have priority over people upgrading from Y to J. So, if you fly a P+ route and purchase P+ instead of Y, while you'd still be last among P+ customers, you'd be ahead of anybody in Y -- and you'd have a more comfortable seat as a fallback if your upgrade didn't clear.