Originally Posted by
spartacusmcfly
I completely understand UA offering more benefits to GS vs 1K. That said, I get frustrated when I see flights like this. Why PN7 and PZ0? Is the 1K really worthy of zero upgrade benefits, while the GS gets access to 1/4 of the J cabin? I completely understand PN2/PZ0 or PN6/PZ4...but I can't understand PN7/PZ0. Seems completely arbitrarily. Is there some logic to this or simply a poorly written algorithm on the part of United IT? BTW, the flight is completely empty in J right now! SFO-BOS in late August...
Any sense of how often this brilliant algorithm refreshes? Weekly, daily?
The problem is that PN is exclusively for GS, but PZ is not exclusively for 1Ks. Anytime PZ>0, Plats through GMs can use miles plus cash to upgrade immediately too. So you’re not thinking about the asymmetry correctly above.
One potential solution is to have a separate upgrade bucket just for 1Ks, but there’s a reason UA has not and likely will never do that...they don’t care about 1Ks enough to worry whether we all end the year with all of our GPUs unused. In fact, that’s precisely their strategy.