geekgirl

I have been gold for the past couple of years and never had trouble reserving upgraded seats if I booked far enough in advance. I am planning a trip to Hawaii sometime this fall, which I have done before, but this year I am finding that even though there are flights that show all seats available, no FC upgrades are available. The reservations agent says I just need to keep checking to see if anything opens up. So in order to possibly be able to upgrade, I can purchase an upgradeable fare, but it's very likely I'll just be wasting my money. If there were already seats booked in FC, that would make sense to me, but seeing that all seats are available yet not being able to upgrade this far in advance is frustrating.

Did the advance upgrade policy change?

jrl767

policy: no

Revenue Management practice: yes ... they're not releasing nearly as much U inventory as they used to, and what they ARE releasing is showing up later

pfpdx

I think they are also really playing around with this. Maybe its a new load formula or they are testing all sorts of stuff. But a flight I was looking at last week had F:7+ until T-3 hours and then the U opened and 3 people cleared in.

Which really doesn't make any sense at all. Why not open the U sooner 1. So elites can be happy/excited 2. Allow for the OLCI up-sell opportunity.

CDKing

Less seats now that 16 became 12 which means they are holding back .for purchase.

diver858

Agreed. Best strategy is to set Expert Flyer alerts for U inventory, my success rate is quite good within T - 30 days.

jsguyrus

Well kinda. The 900 and 900ER still remain at 16 FC seats and right now the majority of their Boeing fleet is 900ER's (75 vs.61).

rustykettel

missamo80

There's no change fee to upfare regardless of status. I've done it as a lowly MVP before.

Neil

jrl767

crummy experience yesterday: U was open, wanted to purchase with expiring My Wallet funds and use miles to upgrade (SEA-JFK redeye tonight) ... booked the basic res with no problem, called MVPG desk to apply the miles, agent said all was good and got me the last remaining window seat

half an hour later I noticed two missed calls and a voicemail from AS; "sorry, your mileage UG didn't actually go through; the system came back with a "simultaneous transactions" error and whoever else was trying to get that U seat was faster ... but you're still on the F waitlist"

haven't yet seen the mileage redeposited :/

rustykettel

I've done it too, but missydarlin has stated elsewhere that upfares are still subject to change fees inside 60 days/no status. I've also had agents since then apply a change fee to upfare (from coach to first, not just from one economy fare to a higher fare) but HUACA still worked.

lalala

With some of the discounted F (P) fares available for HNL, I can't see why anyone wouldn't just outright buy F if they could redeposit their cash into your Alaska wallet (golds and 75k). If you are going to another island - it is more of an issue.

We always look for instant upgrade fares when P is not available, they are not always easy to find, but I would rather not have to gamble on not getting the upgrade.

CDKing

As far as I can tell its primarily 800's on Hawaii so its expected on those routes. I was actually surprised to find 2x U space when only 4 F seats were left on a Feb/March trip I booked back in December to LIH. I'm looking at some 2 weeks out and F is sold out.

Eastbay1K

Also note that the VX fleet is F8, and if I recall, they're likely to put some of that fleet on shorter west coast routes in the future (making planes currently set for F16 or F12 to possibly drop to F8).

Tracer_SEA

I still can't fathom why you can't waitlist GGUs like you can with SWUs on UA

beckoa

Wouldn't be surprised if this was a sabre limitiation... (AS might be able to add this capability, but I'd say there are numerous other priorities)