emanon256

Last week they dropped the $325 upgrade price they had been offering for my BOS-DEN flight this Thursday to $200, even sent an e-mail as bait. This weekend, just before the 1K 96 hour window the buy-up dropped to $150, no upgrades were processed and F was 9, and 10 seats showed open. Today F was still 9 and 10 seats showed, and then an e-mail went out offering an $89 upgrade, F dropped to 1 and a lot of seats opened up in Y. Now the buy up is $896. I am on a Q fare, the buy up to M is around $325, so this is not the M-up they are offering. I checked my flight next Thursday, and they are already offering the $89 buy-ups on it. Out of curiosity I took the bait and it booked into P. I tried some future bookings in F out of curiosity, and P is being offered for less than R/T M in economy. On some of my flights, all that’s left is H and Q, and the P fare is more than Q, and less than H. So now it appears they are not actually selling upgrades, but they are selling discount F for less than a non-instant upgradable Y fare. First Class is cheaper than Economy these days. I just don’t get it anymore.

Continental250K

Is there a time frame for R inventory to open up or am I crazy for checking 2-
3x day 6 days out?

NiceLanding

Yes, encountered that myself while wondering why my ORD-MSP upgrade wasn't clearing with R5 availability showing. I noticed that an H-up fare booking immediately into First cost just $16 more than the cheapest fare they offer with a 7-day advance purchase, $129 less than the M fare and $497 less than Y.

zombietooth

This is what Jeff calls, "a revenue enhancement". It's brilliant in its simplicity:

First, you con elites into thinking that they might get a CPU, so they buy higher bucket fares to increase their chances; then you have a big sale on FC seats for everyone and sell a few for less than Y; then you have a Dutch Auction on upgrades and nearly sell-out when the price gets downright cheap"; and then, a last-minute flyer pays-up to upgrade his Y-fare; and, in the end, the lowly elite sits in Y and the kettles sit in F. It's brilliant!

unavaca

WN is doing this and rocking the socks off UA. Their full-Y is quite reasonable and their discount fares tend to be slightly higher than UA. It's working out well for them.

(I speak to their intra-CA and CA-Vegas routes; no comment elsewhere in the US)

Perhaps they're talking about the E+ upgrade?

Really? Yankee Pier when you could otherwise have Andale's awesome burrito?

Minnesota Bruin

Which burrito is the best?

psfcfa

So I was the last one upgraded on a Friday flight EWR-MSY, but the web site was offering $139 upgrades the day of, and day before. My partner was not upgraded with me (and less-than-happy), but if I had known I would have sprung for the $$$ for her. What is the rule with these paid upgrades for all?

As a side note - just upgraded a US flight tomorrow for $60...and I have zero status other than *G. Guess it's not just UA...

UA-NYC

There are no rules, no consistency whatsoever, and no official word from UA on what they're planning to do about it

Red_Rob

Revenue from misc fees & TOD is WAY up, along with $mi$ek's pay. All will likely continue to go up, not down.

JohnnyGlobal

I know there's no shortage of threads around this topic, but I felt compelled to 'come clean'. MP member since the late 90's. Was a 1K for about 6 years before switching career paths, flying AS (while living up in the Pac NW), and now Premier Silver (but probably getting close to Star Gold by year's end at the pace I'm on).

I'm guilty of giving Smisek TODs to sit in first class for a little over $200 each flight between LAX/SFO and IAD each month (and a couple of other random city pairs, as well). I've only NOT been offered the $219 upgrade option one time (IAD-SFO), and slummed it in 7E on the 752. I feel guilty for obvious reasons--I know that under the old system (that treated me very well in my 1K years)--I would have needed to carefully plot the use of my upgrade instruments and hope that I played my reservation cards right. Now, it seems that I can book darn near any flight between these elite-heavy city pairs, and for a couple of hundred bucks, I sit up front (my employer pays for the tickets...and those tickets run the gamut from S and T fares to M, but never Y or B--try as I might!).

I guess I've fallen into the trap of paying $438 of my hard-earned money each month for a benefit that I once needed to earn with a lot of BIS miles and carefully-crafted booking strategies. I know I took some 1K or GS's seat on the 6 a.m. from LAX to IAD this past Monday morning (on a A319, no less!)...and I felt bad about it (at least for a second or two on this heavily-oversold flight...but the omelette and cinnamon roll really hit the spot!). This Wednesday night, I've got my seat on the evening BOS-LAX departure...another $219 gone (but 6 plus hours of relaxation that I'd struggle to find in the back as a lowly Premier--not many seats left in E+ when I checked in). It's just wrong that I can't even book E+ until 24 hours out from the flight, yet, at the same time that I can finally hope to get a decent COACH seat, I can almost always just 'upgrade' to First in exchange for a little bit of cash--at the expense of much more loyal, high-spend flyers. Anyway, Smisek's strategy may be short-sighted, but I'm sorry that I'm only engaging in behavior that reinforces this terrible system that really puts immediate cash in hand over anything else.

I feel much better now, but still apologize for my behavior.

HNL2ORD

I am BITTER because I have not been offered the TOD but going SNA>ORD tomorrow I will be sitting in the slums- row 28. I literally cannot recall the last time I sat in E- no reason to be silver
Dammmmm Smisek

love_to_travel

No apologies necessary, were I in your shoes I'd do the exact same thing.

EWR764

Are you willing to share what kind of fares you normally travel on? More often than not, I find advance-purchase fares (w/o Saturday overnight) in the IAD-LAX market to be around $400-500. Without defending the program (because I don't like it either, and I've voiced that sentiment to certain people), I do not find it unreasonable for a Silver paying nearly $1000 roundtrip for a domestic flight to find himself in first class a fair amount of the time.

Buy-ups that result in a customer doubling his business in a given transaction are a good thing for the company. It's the $59 "special offer" upgrades offered to non-elites on L fares (with 20+ names on the list) that are virtually indefensible, in my view. That said, I have not yet experienced this phenomenon, but I hear it on FT, so it must be true!

JohnnyGlobal

Most of my roundtrips are between $400 and $600. My BOS-LAX flight on Wednesday night is an "E" fare class, one-way ticket that was booked in combination with a "B" fare on a US Airways Shuttle flight...so not sure exactly how the fare broke down between the two segments, but it was a more expensive ticket than I typically book. So United is roughly doubling the revenue that they get from me/my employer by selling me these $219 upgrades in each direction...I guess everyone in that equation is happy (I end up paying $800 - $1000 for a first class seat that MIGHT have otherwise gone as a 'free' upgrade to a higher-level elite that *only* paid $700 for their ticket, for example).

higgsjoa

I've flown SFO-IAD several times this year, mostly W fares at $500-600. Have never been offered a ~$200 buy-up to F. Have sat in E+ each time. Still waiting for my unused RPUs to be refunded. Have learned to not even try to apply a RPU unless there is R inventory open for immediate upgrade. BTW, 1k here.

No offense to the OP, I'd do the same in their shoes, but this is one of the things seriously wrong with the new UA.