OK, I've been trying to roughly guess my chances at my upgrade clearing on UA 12 on July 18th. There is some W E I R D stuff I'm running into.
Background: I did a Skip-the-Waitlist pluspoints upgrade and then later changed my flight. Apparently a big mistake. I'm pretty convinced the upgrade I re-requested (agent took another 30 points for the request) is not really applied properly and/or the system is skipping me over due to the previous PlusPoints deduction. Just a guess.
That said... For UA 12 on July 18th...
* First off, the mobile app says Business Polaris is sold out, but the web app says only 41 seats are booked (thus 5 available). Why the discrepancy?
* But it gets weirder. Only 4 seats show unassigned on the seat map, meaning that if I believed the web (at 41 seats booked), the seat map has 42 seats taken of 46 reserved. Huh? Who took the mystery 1 seat?
* OK, let's assume seats are available - try to search and buy a flight from ZRH to ORD. The flight doesn't show up, no matter what I do basically. That's in economy, Premium Plus and Business. Why isn't this flight bookable? The app and the website say economy is still available and shows lots of seats. Even if I assumed people bought tickets and didn't pick a seat yet, it's a crazy high number on the seat map showing available. Looking carefully, a flight DOES show at the same departure time, but it's a Swiss flight (same route too). It's not UA 12.
* And more weird stuff... The UA app shows me as #1 in the upgrade list, and the only one in the upgrade list. Has for days. Yet two days ago the number of seats free in business was 10, then dropped to 8, now (if the website is to be believed) there are 5 remaining. Who are these going to? I highly doubt last minute sales. Are other upgrades clearing and mine aren't?
* The app let me "change" my flight ... to the same flight and class, for $0. I did that for kicks. It claimed it was going to re-deposit 30 PlusPoints into my account (it didn't) but I did get emailed a new receipt (with $0 fare change) and now the mobile app actually shows a distinct waitlist entry for my Polaris upgrade requests. It didn't show anything before.
* My itinerary online does not show anything about being waitlisted for an upgrade. If I click the "Upgrade Cabin" button, the screen goes blank.
Soooooooo how screwed am I? Anyone ever had weirdness like. this before? And are there any seats actually available on UA 12? I can't figure out any of this.
I want to switch flights to something more likely to upgrade if this flight is infact full... Dunno what to do. Wish this was consistent.
The plot thickens... Inspecting the JSON response on the website when United returns flight information for UA 12... Shows this:
- pbts: [,…]
- 0: {cabin: "Front", capacity: 46, authorized: 46, booked: 41, held: 0, reserved: 0, revenueStandby: 0,…}
- 1: {cabin: "Middle", capacity: 22, authorized: 22, booked: 26, held: 0, reserved: 0, revenueStandby: 0,…}
- 2: {cabin: "Rear", capacity: 99, authorized: 99, booked: 95, held: 0, reserved: 0, revenueStandby: 0,…}
If I'm reading this correctly, they oversold premium plus by 4 seats. I wonder if the computer is auto-holding 4 seats in business and intends to bump people into business due to the oversell in premium plus.
Interesting. Wonder what is going to happen. Would explain why they're not selling more seats I guess though I think economy is still available in theory, too. So weird.