Regional Premier Upgrades (RPUs) waitlist questions
 

This Friday, I am flying SMF-SFO-EWR; this Sunday, EWR-LAX-SMF. I have applied RPUs to both, and am waitlisted. SFO-EWR has four open 1st (do I call them F?) seats left. EWR-LAX has seven open 1st seats left.

1.) What are my odds of making these upgrades using RPUs? Is there any way to improve said odds, short of buying the upgrade?

2.) LAX-SMF is two class. Using the RPU bumped me to 1st for that segment. Of course, it would be a waste to use an RPU for a 1.5 hour flight if I don't also get the EWR-LAX upgrade. The United rep I talked to on the phone said that if I didn't get upgraded on EWR-LAX, I would keep the upgrade on LAX-SMF but would not be charged the RPU. Should I believe her? And if yes, is this a tricky/risky way to use RPUs for segment upgrades?

3.) The most subjective question - is this the best use of RPUs? I can't imagine many longer flights that I could apply them to.

Thanks in advance!
Yours from economy, where people play Candy Crush at maximum volume, sans headphones, all flight long,
Rachmaninoff

Odds are better than hopeless. Check in as close to T-24 as you can, as that's a waitlist criterion.

Sounds like bad advice. The formal rule is: "A Regional Premier Upgrade will be considered used if any segment of an itinerary is upgraded and flown."

The best use is on ps. or IAH-BOG (and maybe a few similar routes) where they fly the int'l 752 but allow an RPU upgrade. If you're on one of the int'l config 752s in/out of EWR, that's an equivalent use. If it's a normal transcon with domestic F, still a solid use of your RPU, since (a) it's a long flight, and (b) they will serve a better meal than domestic F otherwise gets.

the one caveat to this that i am not sure of is if one is flying on an IPTE config 752 for the EWR-LAX sector. in that case, it is a "businessfirst" product, and the rules are that if one BF segment isnt upgraded, the cert is not considered as consumed.

none the less unless someone has concrete evidence that this is how it works, i wouldnt risk it.

OP, i recommend if you are counting seats on the map, you actually check the loads with a dummy booking or EF. just because the seatmaps show 4/7 doesnt mean that there are 4/7 available.

there are many longer flights that can be upgraded with RPUs. transcons are not necessarily a bad use of RPUs, they're just not spectacular. some examples:

HNL-EWR/IAD/IAH
IAH-POS
LAX-PTY-SCL on Copa
IAH-ANC

As a bit of advice — if you are waitlisted using an upgrade instrument, pay very close attention to "R inventory" on your flight (confirmed upgradeable space). Sometimes at approx. 24 hours prior to departure, UA will convert all expected-unsold F seats into R inventory and will not immediately process waitlisted upgrades; you may be able to call in, "skip the queue" and immediately process your waitlisted upgrade.

This may not be fair to other less well-informed travelers and it's not actually clear that it works // helps, but it is nice to be able to give yourself a feeling of control over your trip. (It's nice to know that by trying a little harder / looking a little closer, you might be able to change something!)

That's the rule on a GPU, are you sure it applies to an RPU? No mention of that exception on the website.

Good point about using RPUs on the HNL, ANC and Copa flights.

Thanks, everyone! I see there is a lot for me to learn. I'll keep my fingers crossed, and will try the calling within 24h trick.

Again I wouldn't risk it without some concrete evidence that it has worked that way for someone here. I don't have enough RPU experience yet to be sure and I thus wouldn't test it :)

I have had a RPU returned when LAX-HNL cleared and HNL-EWR did not ... without asking.

You routed LAX-EWR through HNL?

Trading up to the jersey shore...

In February I did the reverse to get to PDX, EWR-HNL-SFO-PDX. When R>0 on all segments at booking, how can you not? I had to leave a day earlier, and I wasn't the most rested in my meeting, but it worked out.

In April to get home (LGA) from work in ORD, I flew ORD-DEN-HNL-IAH-LGA, all segments upgraded with one RPU. DEN-HNL was an IPTE 772 and HNL-IAH a flatbed 764.

It was a good way to rack up the PQM early in the year.

i assume the answer is yes, but can you withdraw a waitlisted RPU inside T-24? also, do waitlisted RPUs affect your ability to SDC? i assume answer is no.

I was doing some searches and found that for the same flight, I sometimes get two different listings of fare availability. For example, a NRT-SFO flight on one itinerary will try to sell me W class but show R3, where on a different itinerary, it will sell it to me as S class but show R6. And the only difference in itinerary is the time of the next leg. How do you know what the real R availability is?

look up the leg on its own to get true R

UA treats R like other inventory buckets with married segment logic, so you will only see the level of R that reflects the most restrictive flight.

its critical to search segment by segment to know true R.

I tried to do that w/a GPU when I saw R space open up at T-23...agent wouldn't let me (and I tried 3 of them ;))

Maybe others have better results