Originally Posted by
dkc192
I feel like the whole notion of Tuesdays/Wednesdays are best for upgrades and Mondays/Fridays/weekends are worst is a function of business travel demand, which is still absent to varying degrees on international routes. I'd venture that the premium leisure demand that has taken its place is a bit more evenly distributed throughout the week, meaning that upgrade chances on a particular day of the week might not be as predictable as it once was.
I’ll take that bet.
Outside of FlyerTalk, most people are not doing their leisure travel midweek. People want to book leisure travel on the weekends for the same reason that they want to book business travel on the weekends — to keep from interfering with work schedules. Most people are not going to fly on a Wednesday rather than a Saturday and thus create a weird short week for themselves. Some certainly will, but I doubt it’d be enough to even out demand.
To the extent that there is premium demand midweek, I suspect that it’s mostly because the fares were cheaper then.
Originally Posted by
mfirst
Interesting experiment
my brother in law taking a red eye tonight from lax-xxx (not hub). Flight leaving in 5 hours and he has an H ticket with no status. I just applied pp and he is now #1 on the list with 1 seat left.
somehow bumping everyone else?
although it looks like they already cleared 3-4 from the list already.
Not bumping anyone; instrument-supported upgrades have priority over non-GS CPUs, and they must already have processed all of the other instrument upgrades.
Originally Posted by
Aussienarelle
However, I am wondering if United has now factored this into their pricing algorithms as my most recent reservation for December and return January TPAC was significantly cheaper fare for outbound Monday and return on Friday. I think Mondays and Fridays are dreadful days to try and get an upgrade but the airfare was significantly less. I am watching to see if the airfares come down in price for midweek and would switch to them but I am slightly concerned and it is a 14 hour flight...so really hoping the upgrade happens.
Day of week has factored into airfares for years and years, but almost never in the way you’re suggesting. UA is not modeling its pricing to try to get the small number of people who are booking based upon the likelihood of clearing an upgrade to pay more. If your upgrade clears, UA’s reaction isn’t “we should have charged more,” it’s “too bad we couldn’t sell that J seat, but at least we generated some 1K loyalty.”