Originally Posted by
docbert
Upgrade availability and price is always variable, based on criteria that likely nobody outside of United knows - especially for a flight that is still 9 months away. This seems to be doubly true for award flights (see my example above where it was over $5k for an upgrade to PP, and only $100 more for Polaris - which came down to $300 at checkin!).
If you want to 'upgrade' now, your best option is likely check how much it'll code to book the flight directly in Premium Plus. I'm seeing as low as 50K miles for that flight in October, which is only 20K more than what you've said you've already paid. Depending on how you value miles, that's likely less than you'll ever get for the buy-up. Otherwise there's a good chance you'll need to wait until check-in to get a good price - but obviously by then there's a real chance PP will be sold out, and/or close enough to that such that the upgrade prices aren't cheap.
Thanks,
docbert, there's some solid logic in what you said, but unfortunately the numbers are a bit off. The October MAD-IAD flight we're on, which cost me 30K for economy per person, is actually 60K for an outright purchase of PP, so it's really a 30K difference per person. Given that we're not flush with miles, if the $$ cost was reasonable it would make more sense for us to buyup with $$ rather than miles, if they actually offered me an upgrade option, which they are not. That's what I don't understand
As far as the outbound IAD-BCN: Yes, you're absolutely right, it seems it might be very surprising if there would be 2 PP upgrade seats together available at checkin for a significantly cheaper price than the $375 pp that I'm being offered now, which is why I'm leaning very heavily towards taking the plunge now for the outbound flight. (EDITED TO ADD: And today I did indeed purchase the PP upgrade for the outbound.)