Seat 1F

This week $799 to upgrade from bf to gf on the IAD-GRU route. As far as I could tell, only one pre-reserved passenger although gf went out full due to non-revs. One pilot's wife and then the rest that appeared to have just come from the dollar store directly before taking their first class seats (I assume on buddy passes or whatever UA calls them). One of them barreled into the F cabin and managed to knock over the pilot's wife PDB into her lap and on her seat. She was furious. An argument ensued and the crew had to come over and settle things down and change the seat cushion etc. Really classy experience in gf. I was pretty unimpressed with UA GF. Whilst one of the FA's was quite attentive, the overall experience was mediocre at best. No IFE on the entire plane for the entire flight (which in fairness we were advised of prior to departure). Dirty silverware (I had to get two sets......4 of the utensils had not been cleaned properly). Champagne was not chilled. I told the crew this and asked repeatedly for ice to put in the champage to cool it down but it still did not occur to them to chill the bottle. I have to admit that the Newburg-style Seafood was tasty. The warm breakfast in the morning was exactly like the one I get in F on the morning flights from IAH to LAX...just on different plates. No turndown service offered to anyone in the cabin.

I fly F fairly frequently on AA and the UA experience pales in comparison. Not even close.....and I haven't even been on the AA 773 yet.

In conclusion it was not worth the $799 I paid and I doubt I would do it again on UA.

UA-NYC

IME J on the AA 773 is equal to UA GF hard product (or close to it), but the soft product is much better than UA GF. Ex-GRU on AA in J, I had a fantastic salmon carpaccio appetizer, and a coq au vin that was excellent. Better than anything I've had in UA BF or GF.

UA is all about improving the BOB food in Y (since they can make money on it), but doesn't appear serious about improving (or at the very least, changing up) the catering in the premium cabins.

mmayer

UA 909 today ORD-AMS Premier Gold on K Fare

Before Check-in:

Business Upgrade (waitlist) $550 + 20,000 miles
Global First upgrade $3,304

After Check-In:

Business Upgrade - $889 would get the seat instantly.
Global First - Still showing $3,304 but says "Flight not eligible for upgrade"

24/26 Business seats booked - 4 on the Waitlist
4/6 GF seats booked - 1 on the Waitlist

ETA:
T-2:30

Only 1 seat available for $889. 5 on the upgrade list, no one cleared as of yet.

Appears they sold at least one, or a paid ticket changed to this flight.

johnmont

I'm flying to AMS (via IAH) on Thursday for IBC, with a GPU applied but on the waitlist. There are currently 9 BF seats available and am really curious if I'll get an alternative offer upon check-in. Will be interesting to compare to your experience...

Sterndogg

Flying UA1171 7:50am BOS-ORD tomorrow morning N fare...just watching the kettles "buy up" 7 remaining F seats @$159 as they check in (@T24 7 seats were available)...currently down to 1 (edit: at 11pm EST 11/18 Sold out). A total of three elites have been cleared according to upgraded to first list which has not changed in over 72hrs. This is the worst case I've seen in a long time. So it goes...

MrMarket

Things have gotten substantially worse for me in the past two months or so. I fly a lot of routes, both hub-to-hub and hub-to spoke. My old upgrade percentage as a 1K on usually S/W/Q fares was 90%. It dropped off to maybe 70% for the first 9 months of the year. I'm running at ~30% for the past two months (18 flights). I can't imagine what would cause that other than more upsells. There's no way buying/travel patterns changed on a dime like that. They need the revenue but they're making me consider taking all 200K on my annual BIS to DL instead of the doing the current 50/50 split to maintain status with both.

LaserSailor

You know TODs are happening when FC passengers ask for ice in champagne..

hamburgoflyer

So today I was looking for r/rn space SFO <--> LHR in December with
our most favourite search tool Nothing fitting of course.

Then, just out of curiousity I checked out class B pricing, which used to
be a decent deal for 150% eqm but not today of course.

But imagine my surpise, when a flight combination with an upgradeable
fare showed up that I hadn't seen before (i.e. different domestic flight)

I was able to recreate both lists (i.e. cheapest and class B) on another
computer later, came out the same and all other things being equal, with
a multiple destination search forcing the connection city (iah), I would
see the same r/rn space.

Bottom line is, this could be a mechanism of hiding of r/rn space by only
displaying flight combinations where either the intl. leg or the domestic leg
(or both) have no seats available. And only sell to people looking for or
willing to pay higher class fares anyways (or determined ones )

Anyone else observing this also ? Comments ?

Kacee

I'm having trouble following this post, but it is fundamental that you must search for R space segment by segment, since married segments will default to the lowest level of availability (i.e., if Segment 1 is R9 and Segment 2 is R0, both will show as R0 when the two segments are viewed together).

hamburgoflyer

Sorry, maybe I should've been more elaborate or explicit.

Point I'm trying to make is that most ppl won't or can't follow
your recommendation because it's a lot of extra work with an
already clumsy tool, and I believe potential exists displayed
flight choices are being manipulated to only show r/rn space
to viewers of higher fares.

In other words the system behavior you (accurately) describe
may be intentionally used to preferredly show non-upgradable
routes by choosing combinations with one or more legs r0/rn0
to those not well-versed in the system.

However I only took one sample - could be mere coincidence
or anomaly still - and suggest others take more.

RustingInSeattle

I booked a one-way SEA-SFO-SBA K-fare a few weeks in advance for a flight in October.

At that time, an A fare for SEA-SFO-SBA was in the $300s and piecing out an A fare to SFO + a Y fare SFO-SBA (they only fly EMB-120 SFO-SBA) was in the $400s.

At time of purchase, I could have upgraded for $289 which would have been right around the fare difference between my purchased fare and the A fare.

Between time of purchase and until I checked in online, the buy up fare was interestingly $726. Yet when I checked I could still buy a much lower fare whether using SEA-SBA or booking SEA-SFO & SFO-SBA separately

I went to the kiosk and they offered me a great deal to upgrade my SEA-SFO segment (which was on a CRJ-700). The price? $1199 which was over twice as what I could have purchased the ticket for at that moment. Funny.

So in conclusion, we still have TODs... just that now they are thousands-of-dollars rather than tens-of-dollars.