SEA1K4EVR

Welcome to FT. Upgrades for cash are generally available on most flights both in advance and on the day of the departure, but it's very unlikely you'll find one for $99 unless you're already traveling on a more expensive coach fare. The upgrade offers are usually the fare difference between what you paid and the lowest first class fare available without any service fees added (or for elites..the lowest available fare that comes with a free upgrade). On the date of departure if first class is wide open and there aren't any (or many) qualified elites waiting for upgrades then it's possible there will be some less expensive cash upgrades available..but I wouldn't count on it.

silverbullet12

cool thanks for the information!

UA-NYC

Plenty of evidence to the contrary as well - that in fact having no status can get you a nice, cheap cash offer, even with double digit elites on the WL. That's what happens when you have 4 different processes that touch UGs.

YMMV

5khours

Used to be that UA would offer UGs (Y>C or C>F) for $700 to $900 if all instrument/mileage upgrades were certain to clear. This seemed like a reasonable compromise position. Don't know why UA no longer does this.

silverbullet12

It's been down to 349 as low as 219 per person to upgrade. There isn't one seat booked in first class as of now. I'm jus hoping for a cheaper upgrade :-)

UA-NYC

It will keep fluctuating. Check back at T-24 for the best offer. That's when the fire sale happens.

goalie

Offered $459 to upgrade LAX-IAD for UA584 (Friday night redeye) a check-in. Declined-I may be old and bald but I'm not stoopit and will take my chances with a CPU from 10C as .sux is showing it currently booked 12/24 with me number 1 (for now) on the wait list

Edited to add: 11/12 remaining pax (including myself) cleared last night at T-22 hours . Sorry about that buy-up Mr. $misek, maybe next time

diburning

I was offered UFC at booking, which I declined due to price, but now it won't show any sort of upgrade price. The page only says No Upgrade Available to buy up to F. Will they try to upsell me again at OLCI? How about at the gate?

skipmnyc

I was waitlisted with a GPU last week from MUC-EWR. J was at 9 the entire week prior, dwindling down to J=4 at OLCI. There were no offers to buy-up leading up to and after OLCI. Needless to say by the time I got the gate, J was booked full. I suspect that others were taking a buy up offer. So my question is, once you've applied a GPU do you lose the chance to buy up anyway? If it was a reasonable deal, I would have done it. But I had no way to know, except maybe to cancel my GPU. Has anyone had this experience?

Far From Home

what route: LAX-NRT-SIN
original fare bucket: K/S
price offered: $1109
PCU/UFC? UFC
Where it was offered/accepted: Offered at T-24 checkin, declined

Accept it? Ha, no.
Deny it? Yes, and quickly.

Air Houston

I have been offered a buy-up ($499 from a Y fare, so not exactly TOD's) at OLCI with a GPU pending. I declined and my GPU cleared at the gate.

pinniped

This one is interesting. I found this thread to basically complain about *not* being offered an upgrade on a fairly empty flight, but then things changed.

At T-23 hours:

what route: MCI-IAD
original fare bucket: K
price offered: $399(!)
PCU/UFC? I'm assuming this had to be PCU, right?
Where it was offered/accepted: During OLCI
Accept it? No, I am sober, thanks for asking
My FF# for this flight: Aegean Airlines non-elite

At the time I looked, F had three empty seats and E+ was almost empty. I was pretty grumpy that UA wouldn't sell me an upgrade in the normal UFC range. US routinely does for exactly $100 on the MCI-DCA route.

So I go check one more time, this time at T-22 hours:

price offered: $99(^)
PCU/UFC? I'm assuming this is UFC.
Accept it? Yes.

In the 45-60 minutes between my two queries, one F seat was taken, leaving two seats to pick from. I am assuming I will not get any class-of-service bonuses when my miles post with A3, but I will report back if otherwise.

villox

Why is it that some itineraries allow buy-up well in advance to F, but some don't? I have some trips where it's trying to get more money out of me, and others where it simply says "online upgrade not available".

I wonder what logic controls this?

UA-NYC

Is this for the 12pm flight tomorrow? If so, no elites on the list...we'll see if more show up as they check in.

K to Q-up spread is $375 one-way by the way. Close to your original offer. So your every-seat-must-go $99 offer is a great non-elite one

1kBill

Route: SFO-ICN
Original fare bucket: P
Price offered: $1,079
PCU/UFC? UFC
Where it was offered: Offered at kiosk (only, not in advance, not at OLCI)

Accept it? No
Deny it? Yes


Well, first there's the logic of airline pricing at play, then add in the logic of UA IT. Add these together and you get the mish-mash of upgrade prices that we see. E.g. see the $0.03 offer someone got from C->F for MEL-LAX.