Originally Posted by
surgie
Ok good to know. I'm on so many travel blogs and it seems like "everyone" is getting cheap upgrades making me wonder what I'm missing. But obviously people with more miles than we do have many more options. I did find a quirky upgrade for our flight back from LHR in May on the Dreamliner. We are connecting through Houston so it's a 10 hour flight for that leg. If I wanted to upgrade to Premium Economy it's $3300 pp but Business Class is $1500 pp which makes no sense at all.
Miles is probably the only way to avoid paying. Sign up for for a CC and get the bonus. Spend on the card and earn more miles. After two years cancel and sign up again. Sometimes you can get two bonuses if you qualify for a business card. Eventually you earn enough miles to buy a business ticket outright. Your husband would need to do the same since you are buying two tickets. Whether you think it is an economical use of miles is another story. I would never pay the thousands more for business or even premium economy (especially on united) as I don't feel it is worth it. Thus using that many miles would be a waste for me. However, if someone was going to pay that money anyways no matter what, then that's a different story. Ofcourse I'm still sitting on 2M miles right now that are worth about half of when they were earned so I'm hardly the example for wise use of miles.
Keep in mind that many international carrier's business class are far better than United's.
Otherwise, if you're looking for those rare deals, you have to be extremely flexible since you have to travel at whatever time the deal is for to whatever destination the deal is for.