Originally Posted by
narvik
Seat map display on united.com now shows "unavailable" for all seats in J when searching for fares trying to use a GPU.
I am pretty sure it used to show the up-to-date seat map before.
Is this new that it doesn't show the proper seat map?
With PZ=0 looking at the current seat map was my only indication whether it was even worth risking the W fare. I realize this isn't very accurate, but it's better than nothing.
This can be circumvented by going to
https://www.cablepick.net/united, but it's a bit tedious.
(At 23 of 50 booked a few weeks out, I usually risk it for my particular itinerary, in this case.)
So to make sure I understand this, you are using the advance search option "Upgrade Type - GPU" and on flights with PZ0, it shows the only bookable option which is economy, not the business cabin. Yes I think that is a change but I can see the logic behind UA do that. There were probably on a handful of people using it for the reason you were and it was likely confusing many more thinking they could select those business seats.
But if you take off that GPU the multi-cabin seatmaps do show, correct? So if you GPU option (a flaky option with many known flaws) and nothing hits, you can remove that option and see what you want?? extra step yes but still faster than cablepick approach.
As you might sense, I have never been a fan of the GPU search -- its flaws have been too numerous.