Interesting. My reactions are:
- United mentions "discounted economy fares" require 2x the points for long-haul upgrades as "economy fares." It's not clear, but this could be a huge devaluation. Currently region and global upgrades on United can be used for any fare except Basic Economy. This seems to imply to me that there's a bucket of discounted regular economy fare classes (e.g., M, E, U, H, Q, V, W, S, T, L, K, G) that would require 2x the points, and that only expensive full-fare (Y and B) can be upgrade for 40 points.
- I'm sure some people will complain about an effective "devaluation" as more people try to skip the waitlist, but the option to use more points for a confirmed upgrade is something that a lot of people here in the Delta forum have suggested for GUCs out of frustration that GUCs go to waste.
- I love the feature that you can request upgrades for all segments and only pay for the highest price segment that actually ends up clearing. I am always frustrated when using GUCs on Delta that I have to only request an upgrade for the long-haul segments until they clear and then call back in to apply the upgrade to the rest of then itinerary.
- The ability to request all upgrades from the website and mobile app is a huge improvement over Delta's upgrade inventory roulette, but I think it was always straightforward to find upgrade inventory on United.
I honestly don't see Delta following United on this one, at least for a while. If anything, Delta is just going to sling SkyMiles upgrades more
