You can directly upgrade an LH flight with united.com's star alliance upgrade feature, so it's not a stretch to think they could get GPUs to work the same.

But there's a big difference between directly booking an upgrade fare class (which uses standard booking processes and is akin to an award booking) and waitlisting an upgrade for another carrier to process at some point in the future. The later will be much less standardised and of less general value to UA, which is why I don't think it will ever be done.

With the new LH Premium Economy annoucement...I wonder if and when the use of these paper GPUs will only be good towards PE (or PE->J) going forward...

UA has consistently ignored the existence of PE on any other *A partners (NZ and TK), you can't book awards in those cabins and can't upgrade to/from those cabins. Therefore I don't see what would prompt a change here.

You can also waitlist for award space on Lufthansa - I've seen it done as a bug when trying to book phantom F space, and then the next day it was confirmed. I believe the functionality is actually there and they could get this to work if they wanted to.

Now, whether they choose to invest ANY resources in this, well, that I agree with, they won't.

LH will treat it as a different cabin in which case GPU's may only be good for upgrades from E to PE, that's a big change. Award space won't change, not sure how *A upgrades will work either.

But that isn't how *A upgrade awards are handled on NZ or TK. I would be extremely surprised if UA chose to do this, they're more likely to terminate the progamme all together.

But in a super-annoying quirk, you can't do a *A upgrade on Lufty if flight is UA-designated.

Hopefully you are right, E to PE would be a waste of a GPU.

Yeah I found that out before Christmas, and as it was issued by my work travel agent it was far too much hassle to reticket.

A quick question on re-using non cleared certificate
 

If I receive a Certificate for a given date / LH flight / route (and a given confirmation number) but do not clear on that date, may I re-use the same cert for the same route / flight but on a later date ? (in order just to avoid the issue of resending / reissuing a new cert..)

I undertand that no one check at the gate that the confirmation number is valid and it looks like the travel date is not always printed..
so re-using an existing cert for the same person / route / flight number should work ?
Correct ?

Thanks for the feedback

According to the rules you must re-deposit the GPU with United and have them print a new one when you have the new booking done.

Having said that, I've read lots of reports online of most LH stations not caring about the data but more about the flight (e.g. JFK-FRA). I would think you would run into a problem in FRA and MUC where they are all staffed by LH personnel who are most likely to follow the rules. Outstations not handled by LH staff directly are most likely to ignore the date and allow you to use the cert if your name and the city pairs match.

Airlines recognize that flight changes happen all the time so if you're booked JFK-FRA on 10March and then change it to 11March you obviously don't have time to get a new cert printed. LH would likely accept it in that situation (I would hope...)

But to be safe, just redeposit it with UA and get them to print a new one.

-RM

I apologize in advance if this has already been answered, but I have not been able to find it after 20+ pages of reading.

Here's the situation: I have a flight booked with 3 segments on LH (FRA-BOS, BOS-FRA, FRA-SIN), all booked in C/D. Also, I have 3 paper upgrades pre-printed from UA for these segments and PNR.

The issue was that the original flights were in mid-April, and I just had to push the trip out until mid-May. The routing won't change, but in May, there are twice daily FRA-BOS/BOS-FRA flights and the second flight time works better. So, although my routing would be the same, my flight number may go from LH422 to LH420.

I realize that the date change shouldn't be an issue, and the PNR won't change, but am I going to have an issue if the flight number changes?

Thanks

No problem at all.

Boarding pass question
 

Hi,
I finally did not use my GPU .. as my flight was cancelled due to the LH April strike. So i got another quick question.

How does an upgraded LH boarding pass looks like ?

Lets consider I upgrade from Business to First with a GPU.
Will the boarding pass show a O class booking ? or will it still show someway the original business class fare ?

In fact, i would like to have the mile of the flight allocated to a third party star alliance FF program (neither UA or MM).
I fear that i ll just get zero miles if i provide a "O" booking class ticket (that deserve no miles as per their FFP rules for mile accrual on LH)

So it would be nice if the boarding pass could show that this is not a first class award ticket, but a business class fare that was upgraded to first..

Is it the case ?

Thanks for the feedback

Eddy