Originally Posted by
asya999
They couldn't have been offered a buy-up to PE till two people from PE got upgraded into Polaris.
What makes you say that? UA routinely oversells the PE cabin when there are seats remaining in J.
Originally Posted by
asya999
Is it possible the gate agent upgraded two people from PE into Polaris and then offered a buy-up into PE to the two people 2+3 on the list who were in front of her?
Yes, although I'm not entirely sure that it would be within policy for agents to do things in that order. It makes more sense to me that the seats were available for sale, that the upgraders bought into them, and then that the gate agent went ahead and cleared the resulting oversale by processing two people from the PE->J upgrade list.
If there were going to be some sort of shenanigans, it's hard for me to imagine why they would have put the two people in question into PE instead of just shenanigan-ing them into J.