I am trying to book an international flight. Right now, there is an economy saver award ticket available for 55k miles, but there is no business saver award ticket available; just a business every day ticket for 200k miles. I have read that you can pay for the "I"-fare ticket now, even if there are no "I"-fare tickets available to book, and that United will (1) place you into an economy saver ("X"-fare) seat while waitlisting you for a business saver seat. If the business saver seat becomes available, you will get that seat. If it does not become available, you fly economy and the additional miles get redeposited in your account. It is technically not an upgrade, since you are pre-paying for the business saver ticket.
Per the United air travel award rules:
You may use miles for travel in United FirstŪ, United BusinessŪ or United PolarisŪ business class, even if the space is not available. In these cases, United Economy in the same award type must be confirmed, and the front cabin will be waitlisted. If the courtesy waitlist does not clear, it will expire 24 hours before itinerary departure, and you will automatically be added to the airport upgrade standby list upon check-in. In these cases, you will be confirmed on a space-available basis by a United airport representative at the gate once the flight has closed for check-in. For United Polaris business class and United Business travel awards, the difference in miles will be refunded when the United Polaris business class or United Business class segment of the trip cannot be confirmed. Waitlist requests may only be made over the phone with your local United Customer Contact Center.
https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/mil...ir-awards.html
I tried doing this, both by phone with a supervisor and through Twitter (X) customer service. Both agents were familiar with this process but told me that this is no longer possible because of the change to dynamic pricing. That seems incorrect, for multiple reasons. (1) It directly contradicts the written policy online. (2) There are other data points showing that people have been able to do this after United made the change to dynamic pricing in late 2019.
See One Mile at a Time and
The Points Guy.
Has anyone had success with booking this kind of an award ticket recently? Is there any kind of magic language that I should use?
Thanks!