With UA selling 757s and replace them with 737-xx chances for upgrades will be lower, I am afraid.
"321s" You mean 319s on TRANSCONs?

were you offered TOD at all?

Being offered a TOD and taking it to make sure you are up front defeats the whole purpose of "complimentary" premier upgrades.

And I could see more proof that TOD's are in fact being offered and taken. I was scheduled to fly SFO-SEA this morning. I could see the number booked in F increase as people checked in and the number of people on the confirmed upgrade list increase by the same amount. Yet award upgrades not available and buy ups available. Yes I was offered. Not going to pay out of my own pocket for a 2 hour flight. So UA must be ecstatic as they are selling more and more upgrades and giving out less and less CPU's.

CPUs are decreasing because UA is selling them out from under you. What once was is no more. Or, not so much anymore. If you want an upgrade pay for it. Or someone else will. You can sit in back and gripe or you can function in the new world. It's your choice.

Me? A UA manager? The regulars are laughing as much as I am at that patent absurdity.

RNE, aside, "Drat! My cover is blown!"

I'm not griping about not sitting up front. As a Gold out of SFO I don't expect to get a CPU even without any TOD's being taken. Just too many Platinum, 1K and GS here. I'm griping about how the process is not what we were led to believe it is by Shannon. I'm griping about how UA is doing everything in its power to get rid of elites. Someone in another thread had it right, they are becoming the Spirit airline of the majors. But they are so short sighted. They would rather get an extra $100 on a $200 fare for the buy up to F than give it free to the elite that probably paid $400, or most likely more, and is now thinking of bailing because they are no longer getting any value out of the extra money they spend because in the past they had a benefit of getting upgrades. Now I have no idea how many of the buy ups are kettles or elites that have given up on CPU's and are just taking the buy up.

Or I can fly another carrier that either: 1) offers an experience worth the extra money (SQ, CX, OZ, LH (in F)); or 2) values my loyalty more than UA (AA).

I have done both. Look at the financial results of UA. I am not the only one.

I was being sarcastic to illustrate that your masked version of reality mirrors that of the current micro-economic UA management instead of the macro version that realizes frequent fliers bring repeat business and profits.

The absurdity of your position equates with that of current UA management.

Not me. I just fly someone else.

I was on UA this week because they were the cheapest, but I am on Virgin next week because they are cheaper.

If I am going to sit in Y, what do I care?

On international flights (the bulk of my flying), I used to fly UA more often than not. Now I fly almost anyone else other than UA. Yeah, UA, that's a great business plan.

For those who say, "If you don't like it, fly someone else." Well, I do.

Talk with your wallet. I do.

Datapoints:

UA1620 on 3 May - DEN-PHX.
R/RN = 9.
Seat map shows 16 of 20 seats unassigned.
At 96 hour window, 1K does not clear on a K fare.
Reservation is updated to Complimentary Premier Upgrade Requested.
"TOD" - offered on reservation page $339. (as an aside, while I keep seeing TOD, my personal experience is that it's never less than $200 on any of the tickets I manage).

Presumably, CPU processing did occur, but this reservation wasn't upgraded. Now, due to lack of transparency, I don't know if the fare had been say, an H or a Q, would it have more likely cleared? Has CPU processing improved to the point where a higher fare clears sooner than a lower fare? If CPU doesn't pull from R/RN, what is it pulling from? Is UA Insider able to provide any light on this subject - since the stated manner in which CPUs are to process is not how they are happening and it has clearly gotten worse since 3/3?

Some excellent questions to which I doubt we will ever see a response.

One disagreement: the dilution of upgrade benefits predates 3/3.

HNL-LAX this weekend. 1K + companion upgraded at the 1K window. My companion is very happy :)

I don't know if it is almost intentional on UA's part, but I have noticed that right before the window they do adjust R space often, most of the time reducing the # of available upgrade seats despite F inventory remaining the same.

I am on a rock bottom fare for this Saturday... ORD-SLC, the first flight, it was F5 R4 when I went to bed around 10pm last night, this morning it is F5 R3. The kicker is, I have a companion with me, so if there is only R1 [assuming I am not the only 1K on a rock bottom fare] you know what will happen.

Datapoint:

UA1619 on 3 May - LAX-SFO.
R/RN = 9.
Seat map shows 17 of 24 seats unassigned (7 Booked in F - 5 upgrades which matches UA Flight Status)
At 96 hour window, 2 * 1K do not clear on a K fare.
Reservation is updated to Complimentary Premier Upgrade Requested.
"TOD" - offered on reservation page $239.

Datapoint:

5/4/13: UA 276 R/RN=7.. T-96 passed, CPU requested box appears, still R/RN=7. No one got upgraded.

:td: Upgrade not running at the window when there is R space is getting tiresome and quite frankly it is very annoying. I would like to have the first dibs at selecting seats to ensure my companion and I are seated together, not being processed at the airport or at the Gold window when the system randomly scatters everyone around in the F cabin.

Upgrade not running as promised at the window has been happening to me a lot lately. I don't care if I get the upgrade or not, just run the damn thing.

Can't say if it's improving or not but....

5/1: SFO-BOS UA444 (PMUA 57) at 6am cleared at last night at T-30 hours. Flight was F2 with me on a G fare and didn't think there was a snowball's chance in he|| of it clearing via CPU

*must be industrial strength snowballs down there ;)

So apparently it "ran" about an hour after the window... 2 people were upgraded and the flight is now R/RN=5. Ha!

UA probably has a secret agenda to exhaust every single possible avenues before upgrading me. Yes, almost all of my UA flights the CPU processor only runs partially and stops leaving plenty of R space with me still in Y. Then at the airport I am at the top of the list, even if there are 30+ people on the list. Just does not make sense to me.

Maybe there is something about my account screwing up things as almost all of my PNRs were affected by schedule changes and I have been rebooked to an alternative routing in every single instance.

I believe that secret agenda is called "making more money" :)

R space is (no longer) the same as CPU space.

What fare bucket? I'm beginning to seriously think K, G, N are blocked until the gate.