Kalfin

A question to the knowledgeable: Having earned both system wide and regional upgrades what is the hierarchy of rewards as I am already a CO Platinum member? In other words if I want an upgrade on a domestic flight would I be more likely to get it automatically because of my status or because I have used one of my rewards. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

njcommodore

On CO, the instruments (regional and systemwide) will trump the complementary. The other advantage is that they can clear before the complementary window opens.

kevinjrwagner

How do you get an INTERNATIONAL upgrade from an economy fare to business class on United and *A partners? On DL, you have to buy a Y, B or M fare and then either use miles or an SWU. I've heard that on United and *A partners you can use miles or an SWU, but you don't have to book a Y, B or M fare, you can just book the cheapest economy fare. Is that true?

sbm12

On UA or CO metal you must buy a W or higher fare for the SWUs to be valid on the long-haul premium cabin routes. These SWUs can be used in a very limited fashion on LH metal as well. They cannot be used on any other partners.

kevinjrwagner

2 questions:

1. Can you only get SWUs if you achieve 1K status and

2. If you buy a W fare or higher, can you upgrade using miles without an SWU?

Thanks so much. Considering a status match from DL, just want to get my facts straight.

mahasamatman

In general, yes. (Sometimes they can be gotten through promos or customer service, but we can ignore those cases.)

You can upgrade with miles on almost any fare (along with the appropriate copay).

NYCSINUA

On UA, you can use MP/OP miles to upgrade any economy fare, but there may be a copay involved that could be as much as $550 each way. If you want to use an SWU on an international itin on UA, you will have to purchase a W fare or higher. These upgrades can clear before day of travel, or be waitlisted if space is not available.

With LH, you can request your UA SWU be printed and mailed to you. Then, you can upgrade on the day of travel, at the airport, if your ticket does not fall into one of the following fare buckets: X, I, R, N, W, S, L, K,T and E. You will be upgraded as long as seats are still available when you arrive at the airport.

On all other *A partners, in general, you will have to buy Y/B fares and request for an upgrade using miles only. AFAIK, upgrade space must be available at time of request and waitlisting is not allowed.

For more info, refer to:
http://www.united.com/page/article/1,,53477,00.html
http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,52927,00.html

I am only familiar with UA's system (and thus, this post may be a little OT). I'll leave it to other FT members to comment on CO's.

Good luck!
NYCSINUA

kevinjrwagner

Thanks for your help. So it looks like the talk is right. International upgrades on UA/CO are much more attainable than on DL, as even the lower economy fare classes can be upgraded (with miles and copay). On DL, it is only Y, B or M fares that can be upgraded internationally.

For example, on my upcoming flight from TUL-DXB, if I wanted to get upgraded to Biz from economy on DL, I would need to buy the lowest Y, B or M fare ($3900) and then use 30,000 miles. My ticket in E+ was $1100.

On UA, I could get a flight in L/W for $1300, pay the $600 copay plus 35,000 miles.

Booking on UA saves me $2200 and only costs 5000 miles more. Unbelievable.

Please correct me if I'm missing something in all this, but at this point, status matching looks better and better.

I'm PM with DL. With the MP changes, does anyone know if I wait till 2012, can I match to Plat with UA?

tschmans

Good timing for me on this thread. I am a DL DM who just status challenged to a United 1K because my INTL flight load is scheduled to increase. Today I called the 1K line to get the upgrade facts on an upcoming trip of mine SFO-LHR 10-21-11 return 11-1-11 direct each way. I discovered my status challenge includes no SWUs and I have zero flown miles currently on UA. There was a W fare at $1222 but in order to upgrade it I would need 20k miles and $550 EACH WAY = $2322 round trip. I would need to borrow miles from a colleague to qualify.

On Delta an M class fare through JFK or MSP or some others comes in at $3600 but I have numerous SWUs to leverage. So +$1278 over United. Or I can just take an economy fare of $851 and hope for the upgrade on the SFO-JFK route then fly Economy Plus JFK-LHR and hope for an OP-UP in an oversell situation which did happen on both DL legs the last time I flew to LHR. Decisions, decisions...

I also found out that I wouldn't get any SWUs on United until I met the 100k required miles post challenge. At this point I am leaning towards sticking with Delta given my options. Anyone else in the same situation or is there any other advice to be given?

One other note is that my United colleagues seem to indicate they have been upgraded on flights without miles or extra $$ but I am assuming they must have been in an OP-UP situation as well. They are Premier Platinum's or Gold's. When I called the 1K desk they told me that would be the ONLY way this would have occurred.

Thanks in advance for any insight provided!

radonc1

I suggest that before you go and upgrade with miles and cash from a discount economy ticket that you check discounted business fares (Z). I wound up paying $1100 for my son's RT ticket to FCO and then upgrading it with miles and an $800 co-pay. It turned out that the Z fare for this flight was only $2200 so I really did not save much, and my son was on edge until 2days before the flight because he was wait-listed as well. I would have been smarter just buying him a Z fare and ignoring all the foofara for the savings of less than $300.

sbm12

This all sounds correct.

A very large gamble.

I believe all 100K EQMs count, not only those earnt after the challenge is complete. But you need the actual EQMs to get the SWUs.

Sounds likely to me, assuming you're talking about routes that are not UDU-eligible.

st530

Does SWU trump regional on a domestic itinerary?

UA-NYC

SWU=CR-1=Miles

orli-flier

What is the difference between regional upgrades and sw upgrades? I just qualified for CO Elite Platinum and do not understand the difference.

sbm12

The regional upgrades are applicable on fewer routes than the SWUs. Most notably, any route marketed with the forward cabin as BusinessFirst or United's Premium International Cabins will not be eligible for upgrades with the regionals but they will with the SWUs. The chart here is a pretty good reference guide to what can be used where.