I am doing my third MR this coming weekend, and I have a few questions for the professionals.

My itinerary is:

Paid $490, including the use of a 10% off coupon.

Question #1. My outbound flight has a stop and a plane change in ORD, and I am getting jobbed on the "direct flight" mileage bit. I have read that if I can get another flight to ORD with a different flight number, they will credit me for the two flights instead of just the faux SEA-LHR route. With such a cheap S class ticket, what is my best strategy to get united to do this?

Question #2. Somewhat related to question 1, but .bomb is showing only 4 open seats for the initial SEA-ORD leg of the flight. Seatcounter shows more availability than that, but who really knows. If that is not possible, what are the odds of trying to get a VDB with a refund/credit towards future flights and credit for miles flown on the itinerary in lieu of VDB compensation? That would, in essence, make it a MR without really flying or spending money...if they would go for it.

If anyone has a creative ideas on how to solve either problem, please let me know.

Thanks!

If you want to get to the airport very early, there is UA 1210 that leaves SEA for ORD at 6:35. You might get there and try to go standby on that flight, which would likely give you the credit for the two separate legs.

The KVS tool is showing quite a bit of availability for the SEA-ORD leg that you are currently booked on. I'm not sure where you are seeing the 4 open seats, but if you are looking at seat maps, those are notoriously misleading.

If you were in a VDB situation, I think the best they would offer would be a certificate good for a free flight later, or a "$ off" coupon. I have never run across anyone offering a refund.

I think you could have some good success with the early standby to get you the full miles credit, and that is likely as good as you will do with this itinerary.

I think you're right. I'll get there super early and try for that flight or try to get routed through the 6am to DEN or SFO to ORD. Is it possible to get on standby lists via phone before the day of the departure, or is that a gate-only-on-the-day-of-departure function?

And yes, I was using the notoriously misleading seat maps.

To narrow your chances down I would ask the CI agent friendly how the loads look like, maybe even check with EF beforehand.

If evertything is full you might have the chance for a VDB. Not sure if on national routes, but on my ORD-FRA last week I took a cash check of 400$ ^

If you call the day before, the phone agent will only be able to offer a re-confirmed reservation, which entails the change fee and everything. Since this is the first segment of your itinerary, that would result in a reprice, and everything would go south.

You would either just go to the airport early, or United does have a "confirmed standby" offering, described here. I don't use that, so I don't know that much about the details, other than it costs $50 for general members. I don't know if your 1P status gives you a discount or anything - the details may be in the referenced thread.

If there are still seats being sold in the cheap fare buckets, you might just not pay the fee and hang out at the gate for an old-fashioned standby. As a 1P, you should have pretty good priority.

The United timetables show the following options for SEA-ORD the morning of 2/29:

So, I plan on showing up super early and with a little 1P luck and a very friendly CI agent, hopefully I can route to ORD on something other than my original "direct" flight.

You can get on the standby list with OLCI. However, not sure if it will be possible on this type of itinerary (international, plus a single flight number).

Q: How to MR without really trying?

A: Pay me to book it for you!!!

PS-This was the correct answer. I got to SEA very early this morning to get on the standby list, and thank goodness I did because SEA was a zoo with the Mr. Chickens not being able to process leap year. All passengers had to manually check in with an agent, and that made it easy to ask for and get on the standby list. Thus, the direct flight was broken up with two different flight numbers. Onto LHR and MUC.

Thanks for the ideas.