tryathlete

Speaking with a seemingly very knowledgeable GS agent today while booking international RT. He told me that no flights were upgradeable in the return time portion of my itinerary but that it would be released on the 31st of the month. My outbound cleared at booking. Anyone have any data to validate this statement? I'll be reporting back on this UG specifically when it clears if it does. He also was aware of the 25 hour release point.

Kacee

Well if the GS agent was looking for R space for your upgrade, he was totally clueless. GS clear into PN, not R.

tryathlete

I'm not GS. I just happened to get a GS agent

LilAbner

Perfect example of an oxymoron statement made up by a seemingly knowledgeable agent that made up this story to sound very knowledgeable and important. He doesn't have the foggiest idea when and if upgrades will be released.

For one reason, there just may not be any available upgradable seats for release, and if perhaps just a few are available, it ain't happening til the gate.

tryathlete

I'll let everyone know if R space opens up on the 31st. The BS agent as he was called will be called out one way or the other. I've broken a promise to myself by wait listing one leg of a trip instead of searching and waiting for confirmable space, but I would have had to miss an important meeting perhaps or pay a higher last-minute fare, so only one leg confirmed.

Buy a business class Z fare and fatten UA coffers and PRASM.

Mats

I think there are two important pieces of this puzzle:

1. Much of this process is likely to be automated. Continental has a long history of complex, computerized mathematical models for revenue management. They were even discussed in the economics text, The Future of Pricing.. Although there are staff in revenue management who oversee this process, there are far too many flights for a person or team of people to make decisions about an individual flight.

2. This is route dependent. Although I have scored an instrument upgrade to São Paulo, this is a difficult market. At that time, it was flown with a 767-200, and it's a profitable, business market. Continental really hopes to get as many revenue BusinessFirst passengers as possible.

In November, I was surprised to hear that some passengers near me scored upgrades to Tel Aviv. I don't think I've ever seen an "R" seat on those flights. Perhaps they were Global Services. I've never even tried to waitlist for those flights.

On the flip side, I've almost always found "R" space to Paris. Although the Houston flight is gone, there are flights from multiple US gateways, and Paris has more of a mix of leisure and business travelers.

3. My own view is that if you want a premium cabin seat, you pay the fare for it. Everything else is luck. If I'm dead set on sitting in first or business, I will confirm that at the time of ticketing: a revenue first/business fare, instrument upgrade, or instant upgrade. Otherwise, I have to be prepared to fly in economy.

United has one really nice policy that has helped me in multiple situations. During irregular operations, they make every effort to re-accommodate you in the same cabin, regardless of how you got there. So even if you used an instrument upgrade, they'll re-accommodate in business or first class. This wouldn't apply to "complimentary" upgrades, but United is much more attentive to protecting the upgrade than Delta ever was.

I don't blame them for being strict with their inventory. United needs to make money. So I do my best to work with their system, and I enjoy an upgrade when I get the chance. Otherwise, I shop around.

eng3

I'm guessing that it has to do with how many C seats they usually sell and how far in advance they are usually sold. If one route rarely sells C seats during that time of year, I would think they would open more R seats. Whereas if another route usually sells out of C seats during that time of year, they might not ever open up R.

For example, I've been searching for a trip to SYD in the spring and looking over a 6mo time frame (manually searching) I'll only find a hand full of flights with R. Then doing the same for the return flight, it's virtually impossible to find two R flights that line up with the desired duration of the trip.

On the other hand, I was searching for flights to FRA the other day and saw lots of openings.

Col Ronson

i've noticed that on UA839 LAX-SYD, any open C seats correspond to open R availability on the day of departure. Just checked UA839 for today (Jan 22) and its showing RN2

Funny how the waiting list for upgrades is long. Anyone smart would call in and snipe the remaining R seats ASAP.

eng3

Yeah, I think close in R availability is a different beast than searching far out. As for that specific flight, I think there is already a thread about R opening up at T-24 approx

goldelite8

I'm so frustrated with this! Trying to get on an Asia-EWR flight today opposed to the one I'm on through Dulles, and the flight has plenty of seats in coach and BF but R is still showing up as 0. Will they ever release the seats? We're just eight hours away from departure time.

rufflesinc

Which flight?

goldelite8

UA88

WineCountryUA

Lots of those empty seats in business may be misleading, flight is J8, most of the 21 empty (seatmap) seats are sold.

There may be a long waitlist already covering those 8 remaining seats.

Also there may be some irrops in the system UA may be protecting the remaining seats.

And of course UA is going to try to sell upgrades.

Update (couple of hours later) -- R opened up and then decremented by 1 -- wonder if the OP was successful?

richfish13

I'm flying IAH>SFO>HKG on 11/26 and am waitlisted for a mileage upgrade. What are my chances of scoring?

fjfv19

Being it is the day before American Thanksgiving, probably better than usual.