Are E+ Seats or First Class Upgrades Cheaper at the Gate
 

Have a flight Lax-Hnl tomorrow booked with FF points and I have no United Status. Was offered to upgrade to first class for $299 when I checked in. Was wondering if the upgrade might be cheaper at the airport or closer to the flight and also does the pricing for the E+ seats ever go down.

E+ access seems to be fixed in price but FC, if still available and not taken by others already, may be cheaper at the gate.

How so? Gate agents don't have the power to offer lower upgrade rates than those set by UA's revenue management.

Probably not because it's at the gate but because of supply and demand. If they have a large enough supply and low demand the price may go down as departure nears.

Remember that GMs aren't constrained by V-up pricing for TODs - they get the magically delicious offers that don't conform to any fare list ;)

true per se, but there is much recorded experience that offered prices will drop if premium cabin seats are available as it gets closer to departure. Offers have be known to drop after OLCI when rechecked at the airport.

Never seen this. MIA - EWR is consistently offered upgrades for $109 which in my book is already pretty low. In the past, I saw MIA - DEN offered for $299 up until a few hours before departure, but no one seemed to take it.

E+ is a set fee. It doesn't vary. UG's to F may vary, but $299 is sufficiently low that it's likely to sell, so little chance that there will be any left at the gate. I would grab this one instantly, might not be there in 10 mins.

There are several posts in the various omnibus upgrade threads documenting the progression in buy-up offers from booking, to post-booking, to OLCI, to airport kiosk (almost always being the cheapest at the latter).

$299 certainly did not do the trick a few months ago when UA had MIA - DEN nonstop. In almost every flight, you could hear several passengers saying they were extremely glad they didn't buy-up due to the underwhelming F product. Seriously, the burned pasta they were serving in F wouldn't even be acceptable in a school cafeteria. The sandwiches for sale in Y were pretty tasty though.

With no status, your TOD offer should be anywhere from $1.99 to $4.99. Decimal point intended ;)

I may have been confused with a ORD-FRA flight, but I'm fairly certain that my IAD-FRA flight's E+ window/aisle seat price jumped from $119 to $137. As someone with no status, having lost my E- window seat from a schedule change and consequent flight change 1 month out, I'm debating whether to buy or wait to buy E+ or play E+ lotto at check in with 19 unassigned seats left in E-, almost all of them middle seats.

Well, I wouldn't pay $299 for a meal, even if it came from Nobu. In my opinion, if I decided to buy up, $285 of that $299 would be for the comfort/space of a first seat vs coach seat. On top of that, I expect 2 rum and cokes, a $4 meal, and lower passenger to toilet ratio.

E+ variable pricing was recently implemented:

http://www.smartbrief.com/09/17/12/n...e-economy-plus

It was why SHARES was chosen.

there have been variable pricing, in the sense different seats are priced different, for awhile. But the price for the same seat has appeared to be stable. However, given the time variable pricing for FC, would be surprised if E+ seats don't become time variable priced, as this posting suggests