Something really odd with EUA ... gold before plat
 

So - My wife and I are on a flight tomorrow booked on the same PNR (both V fares) -split at checkin. Tried to upgrade with RU's - that expired.

We're now waitlisted... the upgrade waitlist is:

1. Me (gold) Seq #6 for checkin
2. someone else
3. Her (Plat) Seq #5 for checkin

...?

(pm'ing UA Insider with full details)

When I was Pl and my son Gold, he was regularly on the upgrade list ahead of me.

and someone between?

Makes no sense whatsoever.

Update... called the elite desk.

The order it seems is due to the order on the original (pre-split) reservation. As all else was equal, seems the order on the original PNR is the tie-breaker. Useful to know when picking seats based on upgrade list order.

The person in the middle seems to have been a glitch that they say they are aware of and are working on. After my call the list seems to have been fixed.

That still doesn't make sense to me. Why was all else equal? One of you is Gold, one Plat. There's no way those are equal, unless you are on UA metal (in which case why split the PNR?). The Plat should be ahead on the upgrade list, even if/after the Gold has been added as a companion.

Seems that CO systems have a lot of these types of glitches.


CO does not prioritize instrument upgrades by status. It's simply time of request, IIRC.

If this is a return leg and the gold was the plat's companion on the outbound, the gold may be treated as a plat companion again automatically. But that doesn't explain why a plat companion would be higher than a plat, or how someone split them.

I had this happen on a IAH-SAN-IAH trip. Gold sponsors no-status IAH-SAN, on SAN-IAH and then no-status automatically appeared on UG waitlist at t-24h auto-checkin at the expected location for a Gold companion.

If the OP's instruments had been valid, that would be a very good point. But if I'm reading correctly, the OP's instruments had expired. According to the subject line, this is an EUA situation, and the EUA list should be sorted by status.

Am I missing something?

We need to know if the upgrade was waitlisted at the time of the instrument upgrade request.

As far as I know, there's no automatic date validation when a CO agent applies an upgrade. They manually debit the upgrade(s) from the account and upgrade the reservation(s).

Both were wait listed using the plat's ru's, so both were treated as plat.

Status is not considered for waitlisted upgrades on CO. It's time of request only.

A Plat will trump a PPlat on CO if the Plat waitlists the upgrade first.

Okay, so then the explanation is that this has nothing to do with EUA, right? Instruments => status is irrelevant, and there's nothing odd about a Gold being ahead of a Plat... Nothing to see here, moving on... :)

Gold before Plat - correct. Someone between us on the waitlist is a glitch I'm told. As we were both waitlisted using the same instrument, same fare class, same check-in time, (sequential sequence numbers) etc., it should not have been possible for someone to be between us on the upgrade list.

Gotcha. That is relevant. Apologies for my over eager "nothing to see here" comment! :)

Gold prices are going up and up so...

On my way home on Friday, both of my upgrades did not clear and I was not even the top 5 on the WL. It is sort of unusual (I am UA 1K). I got checked in automatically for some reason so maybe that did something? Maybe the system was broken?

Once a while we need to sit in coach to appreciate what we have :D