A319 down and 757 up.

channa -

You agree with UA-NYC that if R>2, then CPU should process?

And, if it is working correctly, an R4 flight would drop to R2, and you could observe the first two people clearing from the upgrade list?

I don't recall UA Insider specifically mentioning this, but I could have missed it. Do you have a reference post where this was mentioned? (or, approximate timeframe and I can go look through UA Insider's posts from around that time.)

Thanks,

Mid-week flights between LAX and OGG often clear everyone and then fill cabin w/ nonrevs. Leisure destinations. Side-topic: Ms Trash and I were only 1Ks LAX-OGG last night. FA came to us first in 4AB for meal choice, then front to back.

The A319s are just not even worth checking the upgrade list. In fact, I haven't gotten an upgrade on an A319 or A320 since the merger. Zero for the Airbus.

Yup. I used to clear the upgrade regularly SFO-HNL even as a silver.

I got one today, SFO-PDX on an A320. I also got one on PDX-SFO on an A319 earlier in the year.

I'm sure people still do get them, but given the amount of F seats, it is precipitously harder now to get upgrades on those aircraft in my experience. Two 550 mile hops to PDX, great, but I'm even missing on leisure destinations (MCO, TPA) quite frequently.

The Hawaii flights seem glorious for CPU's. For roughly this purpose, I started a wikipost with leisure and other MR targets over in MR land: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milea...-airports.html

I missed SFO-LAX and LGA-ORD on Airbi this year.

Aside from IAD-SFO and v-v, I've missed SFO-SNA twice on Airbi this year. I'm doing fairly well on Airbi otherwise.

Yes.


It would drop to R2, R1, or R0 depending on the holdback programmed for the flight, presuming there are enough eligible Elites at that window to utilize those R seats.


There's no upgrade list to watch, but if you see R go down (and F likely as well), around the window timeframe, that's the desired operational behavior.



I believe it was shared around the first quarter of 2012.

And frankly, that is the behavior that is observed in 99% of the EUA situations -- they dump all of R (except sometimes 1 or 2, depending on market). That's why when I observe a 96 hour window and an R9 flight with 2 known 1Ks on the plane, that is the system not working as expected. All this talk about some sort of mysterious hidden bucket is rubbish.

As an aside, that excess R anomaly is what triggers the TOD situation -- the EUA system isn't processing correctly, then if that excessive R condition makes it to checkin, the upsell system sees the wide open R and assumes there are no further upgrades to be given, so it sells them out from under Elites for cheap in an attempt to collect some amount of cash for it.

As I've said before, as much as I get on UA for its issues, the upgrade problems are not a result of malice or contempt towards customers. It's a poorly managed system (actually 4+ systems) which do not communicate with one another, and as a result, they will at times not execute in a manner that matches the published business rules.

They have acknowledged as much, and they are spending money to fix it. In the meantime, it is what it is, and it's broken.

My CPU % is way up and I generally receive them 2-3 days out. Though I will say it is very much dependant on aircraft. 738/9s and 752s have been good, 319s/320s have been extremely tough. Most of my 319 upgrades are M ups.

UA scheduling seems to force some issues as well. I understand scheduling is very complex but for the past month and the next month UA has a 720pm ORD-PHL on a 319 and a 9pm ORD-PHL on a 739. Over the past few Thursdays the 720pm flt only has 1 or 2 CPU upgrades (if that) with 30+ people on the waitlist. The 739 seems to have 10-15 CPUs and ends up with only 5-15 people on the waitlist. UA keeps the small plane on the flt that has more elites.

Within the last 3 weeks, I've cleared 12/14, including 2 BOS-SFO, 2 SFO-BOS, BOS-LAX, LAX-BOS, IAH-BOS, and others. There is only one secret to this...

You and I, while we agree on much of everything else, will have to disagree on this point. It doesn't really matter what the technical reasons are that TODs are happening...what does matter is that the error is in UA's short term financial favor and that they have been unable to fix this for several years now, which for an organization its size and resources is a de facto admission that they are in no hurry to fix the problem...which makes it intentional in my book.

I have no inside knowledge, but it seems to me they have an awful lot of merger-caused IT problems which do not increase revenue and that also have NOT been fixed.