Upgrade instrument philosophy
 

So I have all my CM GPUs & RPUs expiring at year end. My family and I are on UA IAH-PTY on an H fare, which should be eligible for these instruments. When I do a UA flight search for the flight, I see R0, which I assume is why I get an error on the CM upgrade page, as previous posts here say no waitlisting. Is there anything else to do other than keep checking and jump on it if I see R change?

(I used expiring UA GPUs on the outbound flight, which are waitlisted, and I have had GPUs get rejected on both flights before, so I'm not enthusiastic.)

The H fare is eligible. You're right, you need R to confirm the upgrade. Nothing to do but check diligently and have the upgrade processed if R opens.

It would be nice if their terms and conditions actually said you need R space on UA (vs only mentioning Z space is needed, which applies to Copa flights only it seems)

Yadi, do you get an error on Copa site saying that your class is not eligibile, or that the space is not available? I get the former even though it's a W fare...

I just get the error message I posted above, no details on what the error is. It's always the same. In my recent tries, I know the fare is eligible, and I know
R=0 on the UA website, but the same error. In my previous tries, it's likely my fare didn't qualify, but the same error.

do we know if the 12/31/16 expiration date is the redeem by or the fly by date?

Copa GPUs and RPUs require confirmed R space for successful application.

It is Fly by date.

I just ran into this issue as well - with a W fare also. Were you ever able to figure out how to fix / get around it?

Is R space available for your flight? If not COPA RPUs will not work.

Copa GPUs and RPUs require confirmed R space for successful application.

My case is complicated. I have two separate reservations, one for me (UA 1K), and another for 3 family members. I had one expiring UA GPU that I applied to myself, but was waitlisted. In the meantime, I kept trying to apply the Copa GPUs to my family's reservation. Nothing but the generic error message.

Remarkably, my GPU from UA cleared, 3+ weeks in advance! So, I immediately went back to the Copa website and thinking that now R was available, tried to apply the CM GPUs again. Again, same generic error message. (United site still shows R0.)

I was confused about the "Copa FF number" field. My 3 family members don't have one, so I enrolled one of them and used that. No dice. I tried all three at a time, no dice. I tried each member individually, no dice. Only the same generic error message. I've tried on different browsers as well. I'm still confused by the Copa site's message that itineraries must be separate, whatever that means. I guess I'm forced to call and see what's up.

It is. R space available, I'm booked in W, but I get the "The requested class is not eligible for an upgrade" error.

I've successfully applied several upgrades this year (GPUs and RPUs) in the exact same way without issue, so not really sure what's going on here.

Suggest you leave that blank. It's not a required field.

Great tip. Left the CM FF # blank, tried it again in two different browsers, two different languages, but the same generic error.

But, I tried it again without the UA ticket number, which also is not a required field. This time, after a much longer pause with the circling aircraft, I got the "Error al procesar su solicitud. La clase solicitada no es elegible para un ascenso." Well, supposedly the H fare is eligible, so now I'm thinking they have one error message for both R=0 and/or fare class not eligible. Seems like small progress regardless. Thanks for the suggestion. UA still shows R0 so I'm a little more confident that is the culprit as opposed to some tech error.

Try upgrade after splitting the reservation for each passenger if you haven't already done that. Else just call COPA.

No, I tried calling but there was no R space available