With all the threads running on and me in the midst of a two week business trip, my trip starts to wind down tomorrow with a MEX-IAH flight on CO, then on Sunday back home via US IAH-BWI, meaning that I get to enjoy the KAOS of March 3rd.

Just checked in since I know of the outage tonight and while there are two open seats in F, I'm not automatically cleared into F but offered the cash upgrade for $359.

Is this something new? That as a UAPremExec (or whatever it becomes tomorrow), we're not getting automatic 24 hour upgrades?

As I see the comments about the degradation of the program, it certainly makes AA and DL look a little more appealing - especially since my home airport BWI isn't a UA hub and doesn't have any amenities to make United Club worth the price.

Not to mention the restructuring of the MP numbers which, after 22 years of flying UA, I've burned into memory and a bit perturbed that I will need to learn a new number.

Welcome to COdbaUA. You're likely to see a lot of this going forward (unfortunately).

This is something that both United and Continental have done for some time. Complimentary upgrades are cleared based on inventory being made available and are separate from Upgrades for Cash (UFC). The $359 is likely the upfare from the current booked fare to the lowest fare that books into F.

This is not related to the PSS switchover or the merger.

$359 is most likely the difference in fare to F. What's wrong with someone paying the fare difference between Y and C?

Nothing wrong with it, as long as you give up believing in the cornerstone elite benefit of the complimentary upgrade system.

And United has not done this "for some time". Inside T-24, those would have been upgrade seats on PMUA.

In actuality the only thing that's changed is that upfares no longer require a change fee. In the past, if I wanted to upfare from a K to an HUAUP, I'd have to pay the difference and the change fee. Now it's just the fare difference.

This option had ALWAYS existed, now it's being more broadly marketed and has better visibility. That's what's changed. Complimentary upgrades always took lower priority compared to these upgrades for cash, even in the PMUA world, even in the e500 world.

OK - I've flown about 400K BIS in the past 5 years, and not once have I received any sort of UG offer at OLCI (at booking, sure, that's a clear sign of NC/NF). And I've gone into OLCI plenty of times still in Y.

And while there's been no shortage of UFC discussions for int'l flights, until CO entered the mix I had never seen any threads on domestic ones (still rarely if ever do) when it comes to UA metal.

I've flown about 400k BIS on UA in the past 4 years and have seen this a bunch prior to the merger.

Getting UFC offers (while waitlisted) on domestic flights inside T-24? Maybe I missed all those threads...seems like a bizarro UA that I'm completely unfamiliar with

I've had about 500K BIS in the same period and I've seen it many times, both domestic and international, though my larger point for the period 3-5yrs ago (and less so the recent past) is that the option to UFC by buying-up to the HUAUP fare class (or similar) has always been available but not marketed. You just had to call reservations and ask to change your fare class to the lowest F. I did this a grand total of oncein that period FWIW, so that's the experience I am speaking from, though I know others (not on FT) who had done it more often.

So two things specific to UFC have changed in those 5yrs just on the UA side - it's now marketed, and they waived the up-fare change fee.

Those changes alone are not what we face today, however; that in combination with holding back NF/NC, and with the pricing issues for these UFCs (notably ex-EWR) have painted a pretty bleak picture over the past few months for elites - on that I agree with you.

All that said, if someone wants to pay $359 to upgrade to F for IAH-MEX, meh... I can handle the 763 mile flight in coach.

FWIW, that's the exact amount my girlfriend was offered to upgrade that segment in January of this year from a G fare. We passed, she eventually got the EUA.

Actually getting the offer isn't a sign of NC/NF - it is a sign of A. I think what changed is that they are marketing such A fares more aggressively, even after you have purchased your economy ticket. You could always choose to buy discounted first if A fares were available but they didn't tend to show them to you unless you asked for F availability at booking. Now they show you multiple times the fare differential from what you bought to the A fare and that is what you generally see, not just at OLCI but also often if you look at future itineraries details on the right side of the screen. These are not the ToD upgrades that some have seen on CO and are an issue - these bigger numbers are just fare differentials and noone looking at upgrading really should be objecting to not getting one because some other passenger chose to actually buy first class.

Exactly. And the up-fare change fee to A (if available) is waived.

Funny since people had request that the up-fare be waived for years...

Now if we could just get them to waive it for K->W on int'l itins

"Marketed" being the pressing issue - other than the most ardent flyers, who really knew about the buy-up?

While I hate the active upselling, at least it's at a legit price (and not likely to be accepted)...it's when it turns into a TOD that faith in the system is lost

It never made any sense to me that an airline would charge me a fee to allow me to pay them more for a ticket. THAT is truely bizarre. So yes - all such upfare charges should go away. (Years ago in the days of common fares/ticketing I once had a Delta full coach ticket to get home from the east coast and noticed a AA connection that was earlier - AA wanted to charge me to take the ticket a fee! I said no thank you and took my $700 ticket over to UA who at the time was quite happy to put me on a plane.)

There's a not-so-subtle difference here. They're not actually selling you up to F, but instead selling you up to a Y or discounted-Y fare that itself is upgradable (subject to availability). Then CO clears your upgrade instantly, possibly jumping ahead of others who would have been upgraded already except for the discreet upgrade windows they impose on everyone else.

What most bugs me here is not that their prioritization system might be unfair in some way, but that they've set something up that rewards actively gaming the system and adds uncertainty and stress to the flying experience. Instead of just picking my fare and upgrade type once when I buy the ticket, it now feels like I'm at a competitive disadvantage if I don't start with the cheapest ticket and then constantly monitor the space to decide whether and when I should jump in to take a buy-up or wait longer to see if I get a TOD offer or free upgrade. With experience, I'm sure I'll get good at this game, but it's not really where I want to be spending my time and energy before every single flight.