Worthless miles
 

Why do we bother? Tried to book a flight and upgrade on United flights two months out. There were no 1st class seats booked; also NONE available for upgrade. I called and all a rep could tell me was that they were in it to make a profit.

Worthless miles
 

Vote with your wallet.

How do you know? The airline knows the history of the route and the probability of selling first class seats.

I know because the UA website still shows all of 1st class available. I went ahead and booked SW.

Those are seat assignments, not sales. Many people purchase tickets without choosing seats until nearer the time of travel.

You didn't mention what flight. With the exception (AA only?) of when an upgrade class is the exact same booking code (A in AA's case) as a discount-first class (on domestic 2-class planes), finding upgrades that will clear at the moment of booking can be very tough on any airline. Most people have to either "trust" or "risk" that they'll get miles upgrades if they go an upgrade waitlist. Often an airline will open upgrade availability only "momentarily", to the point that if you weren't waitlisted for the upgrade, you're not likely to ever see it.

Unfortunately, IIRC, United charges the co-pay (or requires booking higher-cost fares) for a miles upgrade at the time of booking, whether or not you end up getting upgraded. AA, by contrast, doesn't charge the co-pay unless/until your upgrade actually goes through, and allows upgrades from most any fare. So putting yourself on a miles+co-pay upgrade waitlist at AA is not quite as (financially) "dangerous" as doing it at UA (unless UA has recently changed their miles upgrade requirements and processing).

Lol, no first class seats 2 months out. I'm shocked.

+1 ....

OP must be new to the redemption game. But yep, the UA rep was right, they're in it to make a profit, though probably best not to toss that out to an angry customer.

Because many of us have been doing this long enough to know that availability on one airline on one flight for a product very unlikely to be available at this point isn't enough to condemn the entire FF business process.

If I called now to get a room in PHX for Super Bowl weekend, I wouldn't write off the entire concept of hotels as a sham.

Good FF Results for 2015
 

I have booked three roundtrips on United using miles for later in 2015. One trip was booked 337 days in advance of travel, while the others 9 to 10 months in advance.

While I didn't always receive my first choice of departures, the available choices were adequate for our needs.

Similarly, I also booked three roundtrips on Southwest, admittedly an easier task, and one on Alaska.

Fairly good results.

So you can't use miles to fly in first class so you book Southwest? Isn't that like cutting off your nose to spite your face?

Good that you could find F availability on WN. I never can.

UA has gotten really bad over the past 12-18 months with tightening up award availability. I seldom see saver awards on the routes I want except at undesirable times of the day, even months in advance. AA award availability has been significantly better every time. Hope US doesn't destroy that....

American has always been good for me.
 

Delta & United not so much.

Pardon my ignorance, but I haven't flown Southwest in almost 10 years since the nearest airport that has WN is over 150 miles away. Do they have First Class now?

We look at a different seat chart than the agent,

Seats are booked out because of projected sales, based on data.

There is also. $395.00 United Credit Card that opens up empty seats, I hear.

Try to book AA and see what kind of routing and layover you get...

When everyone has a million miles a year, it is kind of fun to try to find a seat, everyday.

Be a million miles flyer is no fun when we all have a million miles....

:)

It's not "first class" so much as they give you a five-second head start to sprint down the jetway and cram yourself into a seat before the hordes descend.

No, they merged with AirTran which did have First Class, but as they integrated AirTran they got rid of the First Class on it. That integration is now complete (as of a couple months ago), and there are no longer any AirTran flights.

That was thus a joke about the impossibility of finding First Class awards on Southwest, because there is no First Class, and thus there are no First Class awards.

Southwest still has open seating. So the one "perk" at Southwest is earlier boarding, so you get a slightly better choice of the seats in the all-coach cabin.

Can't condemn an airline just cause one instance didn't have any saver award availability. That said, in my experience, United has been nuking saver award availability over the past year or so. Obviously it is impossible to quantify the effect, but it has been happening.

True. There are, however, a wealth of other reasons to condemn United too :)

That was the joke :)

I stopped flying southwest when I realized that a VX F ticket was cheaper than a Southwest Business Select ticket for the same route. Also I flew about 10 round trips in a row with them and not a single flight was on time. After I stopped flying with them they sent me a letter apologizing for being late all the time.

I redeemed all my southwest pts for amazon gift cards, and now I fly F on VX. Never been happier. It's cheaper AND real first class (width = 21; pitch = 55; decent food and booze). Back when Southwest was dirt cheap, at least you were getting a good deal (my first ever flight to Vegas was $25). Now it's overpriced and just as crappy as ever.

Ok, I'm finished ranting. I feel better now.

I always fly F on WN

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

So you're a pilot? Or sitting in 1X ;)

I agree, United is garbage.

Best way to get it is to book Y and then have one of the lounge agents upgrade you. @:-)


To the OP: a lot of us have a variety of bones to pick with United, but I've actually had pretty good luck using their miles. You can book much of the alliance online with no junk fees (YQ, etc.), and availability for true awards is (IME) better than their competitors.

What you were looking for on your one domestic flight was upgrade availability, which is a bit of a different animal than award availability. That's finicky and unpredictable on almost all airlines. Did you look on other days? Other flights? Did you look for straight award seats?

Take comfort in this: if it's a domestic U.S. route, which it sounds like it probably was if WN also flies it, chances are good the the first class cabin sucks anyway, so you aren't missing much. ;)

My UA miles have mostly been turned into TATL and TPAC awards. Sometimes J (if I'm solo or with only my wife), sometimes Y if it's the whole family. Lots of trips, lots of good value, no garbage fees. This summer we're going 5 TATL seats together in Y on UA miles in the middle of peak season...that's not easy to do on most other carriers.

I'll save my complaints for the crappiness of UA/UX's service. I'm (mostly) happy with their Mileage Plus program, given that I hold no native status whatsoever in it.

YMMV. I also book 330 out on UA, and there is 0 availability on all days the entire (holiday) week. This is the first year in about 20 years this has happened.

There is a significant availability issue.

I seem to have better luck booking TATL/TPAC at the 7-8 month mark, not at 330 days. Maybe it's just me... I often look for alliance partners...not UA metal...wonder if that has anything to do with it.

I was going to book a flight on United with United miles the other day and needed 2k more for my ticket. I booked the flight for both my girlfriend and myself and after I bought the extra miles for me, I realized that I couldn't pay for her ticket with a credit card and mine with points in the same transaction, so I ended up just paying for everything with the credit card. Does anyone know if I can get a refund for the 2k points I purchased from United?

Welcome to FlyerTalk, Erik_KSU.

No, you cannot get a refund on buying miles (United uses miles, not points). But I presume you will need those miles again in the future, so you'll have 2k extra then. Just make sure you know how to keep them expiring.

However, if you bought Skymiles, the IRS does allow you to write off a worthless asset to create a tax savings.:p