kb1992

No. I won't burn RPU if it's R9 inside T-24. I'll take my chances.

If it's R1 inside T-24 on a long flight e.g. BOS/EWR-SFO/LAX, then I may call to apply RPU.

channa

This is not correct. There is an impact because the presence of R has an effect on other items, namely upsells.

Since the upgrades don't run immediately (you have to wait for the next sweep), there is a potentially large gap between when a ticket sync issue gets fixed (if it ever does), and when remaining upgrades are distributed.

Now if the business process were a bit cleaner (e.g., EUA bombs, some team gets an alert, fixes it in an hour or two, then re-runs EUA), sure, there would be little or less chance of anomalies occurring.

But in reality, the gap between a potential EUA stall and remediation could be a number of days, during which time, several unintentional low-cost upgrade upsells could be offered.


Or it shows that the customers who remain have largely given up and begun to accept non-functioning IT as part of the UA experience.

arctikjon

This. Hell I would not be totally opposed to axing the window anyway and doing all upgrade at departure for this very reason (Of course if you dont take advantage of SDC you probably disagree, but if you arent then you should be!). In practice I dont know when the last time I have had an upgrade clear at the window, at best its right around the 24 hour mark that mine clear in advance... though more often as not its at departure.

Often1

There remains the fact that holding CPU's to the gate is an advantage to many. If you are a 1K with a flexible ticket or making use of SDC, there will be space in F and when you change/SDC to the new flight, you will wind up at or near the top of the list. If the F seats are largely gone down as far as Silver at T-24, your change/SDC is into a seat in the back.

Conversely, CPU's are freebies. Holding them to the gate doesn't harm anyone as them what get the UG get to sit up front and that doesn't happen until you actually board.

UA-NYC

Exactly - for anyone still flying UA, the baseline is now glitchy IT, mediocre food, semi-functioning wifi, agent pushback, etc. Has gone on long enough now where you realize it's the deal you make with the airline.

wpr8e

How do you know that United doesn't already hold back that inventory for upsell opportunities? I think that's the gist of the litany of arguments above. We already know that R>0 isn't a good indicator of clearing an upgrade. So clearly something is happening the background to allow for additional upsells.

That seems to be your only argument, an irrational fear that is impossible to prove or justify.

You've repeated this for years, but frankly the argument is tired and unjustified. There's a difference between disagreeing with a business approach and faulty IT. At this point it's a convenient scapegoat given there's no way to prove any accusations with certainty given that much of the internals are opaque.

channa

But R=9 is a good indicator of clearing an upgrade. And that's exactly the scenario reported by the OP.


Unjustified? Are you saying you have not seen any faulty IT from CO IT?

Given what I experience with them on a regular basis, it's a pretty safe bet that IT malfunction is a more likely cause than strategically holding back 9+ seats on a leisure route, especially when they've acknowledged said bug.


So basically, your argument is that CO can hold back seats, and on a light Elite market like this, R=9+ means they're holding back 9 or more seats, and we're willing to ignore the fact that CO has acknowledged bugs in the upgrade process that stall EUA from running.

Sure that's technically possible, but odds are that's not what's happening here.

Soccerdad1995

We don't know how the supervisor spoke to the OP. All we know is that she told him that CPU's were complimentary and not guaranteed. The OP characterized this as lecturing. It may or may not have had that tone to it, and since the OP thought the supervisor was lying, he may very well have inferred something that wasn't there. Who knows?

If the supervisor told the OP that he should actually buy a FC ticket next time and stop being such a cheap ......., that would clearly be improper (though still technically accurate). I didn't see anything from the OP that indicated that level of rude commentary, however.

nuspieds

Whether or not there is a bug in the IT system, I do not know; but what I do know is that since the changeover to the new IT system, I have lost confidence with the whole upgrade process.

The new UA has clearly demonstrated that they put lots of effort into selling that upgrade--all the way up to the day of departure--rather than giving it away free to an elite. Upgrades have become an inconsistent mixed bag for me and I have come to accept that the new operating model is to sell that upgrade if someone is willing to buy it. As such, I bite the bait when the bait is a reasonable offer and, to me, this is just the new reality at UA.

A few weeks back, at T-24 they offered me an upgrade for $427 from RSW to IAH. Definitely not worth it, so of course I declined; in the morning, however, I got it at the gate. All I could think of was, "Really?! You couldn't clear me last night?!"

Disappointing? Yes. Frustrating? Yes. But it's the new UA upgrade process I've come to accept.

Kacee

The tone of the OP's posts here, and continued assertion of "facts" that are flat out wrong, tell us everything we need to know about how that call likely transpired.

I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that next time I call UA, the prior customer didn't poison the well for me as OP probably did for a whole batch of subsequent callers.

jgsx

OP doesn't understand upgrade system, supervisor knows that OP's explanation is wrong. OP calls supervisor liar and complains to UA. OP won't budge even after immediately being corrected. I wonder why the supervisor was so rude.

1P

Repeatedly in this thread the term "out-of-sync ticket" has been used. I understand that this can stall the procedure on a partcular flight when a sweep occurs.

It would be tremendously helpful if someone could give a definition of exactly what out-of-sync actually means, how it happens, and why it seems to happen so often. Is this in fact just another annoying facet of SHARES? Is it down to incompetent programming? One would have thought that when you have a confirmed and paid-for ticket that would be the end of it.

I can understand why a ticket may need attention if there has been a schedule change or an upgrade has cleared — and will this de-sync the ticket or is it something else? — but out-of-sync-ness seems to happen far more frequently than one would expect. And just what does re-syncing involve?

How about a sync primer? plus an indication of whether in fact UA could set up the software so that (a) people know when their tickets are out-of-sync and (b) people can then fix it themselves online.

wpr8e

The only thing that R>9 shows is there's seats available in First. But whinging that R>9 and you are justified an upgrade is preposterous. I don't need to repeat again why.

I hate to break it to you but the airline in questions carrier code is UA, not CO. CO hasn't existed for a long time.

Secondly, while SHARES is the surviving RES system, the inventory and revenue management system is ORION, the original UA system.

Lastly, yes it is no big deal if UA holds back seats until just before departure. Again this could be for upsells, IRROPS handling, last minute GS passengers, who knows. But at the end of the day, on a light elite market, you'll likely get upgraded, so who cares that it is just before departure?

Sykes

A ticket and a reservation are two separate but related objects. The reservation holds the space, while the ticket represents a payment instrument for the reservation. You must have both to travel--for any segment on an itinerary, there must be a precisely matching coupon on a ticket. (Most tickets are now entirely electronic, but the mechanisms and terminology [like 'coupon'' 'reissue', and 'exchange'] are from the days when tickets were physical paper.) Now, what you see on United.com is the reservation, while the ticket is mostly hidden (although usually the eTicket receipt link matches the ticket).

Most of the time these match with no problem, but if there is a schedule change or a cleared upgrade, both the reservation and the ticket must be changed to represent the new flights or inventory. These changes first happen in the reservation, then there seems to be a process that automatically follows up and updates the ticket to match the reservation. Sometimes the process that updates the ticket doesn't work properly for some reason, or it takes longer than it should (in my experience, it happens most often on tickets with previous changes), so an agent must manually re-validate or reissue the ticket so they once again match.

We have heard in the past that if there is anyone at all on the upgrade list with a reservation that is out of sync with the ticket, the CPU process will grind to a halt, but generally I don't think agents that we can talk to except those at the gate are empowered to investigate or correct problems related to the CPU process.

I have reason to believe that United has a system that automatically monitors for out-of-sync tickets and queues them to an agent for processing, but I guessing it doesn't happen fast enough to resolve some issues, and entirely misses some others.

Bonehead

And then supervisor contacts management and lobbies for Expert Mode to be disabled so that ignorant callers will stop harassing the agents.