Originally Posted by HeadInTheClouds
FWIW, I share the frustration with UA's insane holding back on business & first class award tickets. At a time that we constantly hear that UA's biggest revenue problem is the lack of people buying premium fares, why is it that we have such poor availability in premium cabins? Baffling. These days, AA's premium award availability is leaps and bounds ahead of UA's. If however you're redeeming awards on UA partners, this seems to be pretty good (as shown in this thread and in my experiences), and UA's seems to get a LOT better as the flight date approaches.
So how soon before a departure day do people think that UA opens up those extra Biz and F seats for award travel? 1 day? 1 week? 1 month? There was plenty of F availability for the award flights I wanted but nothing in Biz. I'm going to take the F and if Biz does open, I'll downgrade to get 20k miles back. The .......s will likely let me do it for $50 per ticket.