Kacee

There is no W fare requirement for a mileage plus upgrade.

The 788 and 789 have a the highest percentage of J seats in the UA longhaul fleet. And in any event, upgrades are more dependent on route than aircraft. SFO-FRA on a 744 is harder than almost anything else in the system.

787fan

rule of thumb : the closer to east coast, the easier the upgrade is

or forgotten routes like IAH-FRA

Silver Fox

With "easier" being an exceptionally relative term these days since the merger and changes that I will like. Oh well.

SeattleDavid

Some people will not like these suggestions because they are true rules of thumb, but if R=0 there are still three bits of data that can help you choose a more upgrade-probable flight ...

a. the profile of availability across the business class fare buckets – if it 9 across the board (except for R of course) then that is better than a flight that is not 9's across the board.

b. the number of unoccupied business class seats –.although this is not a perfect indicator of load, it is well correlated with load, with the correlation probably improving closer to departure.

c. the number of E+ seats occupied – people most likely to beat you for an upgrade are probably sitting in E+ and so the fewer of them there are the better.


So, if you have to book something without immediate upgradabiity, look for 9's across the board and the biggest possible difference between b and c.

Kacee

These are all good points. The very best indicator of R opening is seeing PN go from 0 to 9.

QBK

Another rule of thumb is to look for (or try to figure out) dates and/or days of the week that are less heavy with business travel. This is route-dependent. For example, flights from SFO/LAX to SYD are easier to upgrade on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, because business travelers generally want to leave on Friday/Saturday and get in on Sunday or Monday morning.

Similarly, going to Europe, you're likely to have a hard time upgrading a flight that gets in early Monday morning -- it's a double whammy, because (a) business travelers want to arrive right before their Monday AM meetings, and (b) they really really want to have a flatbed seat beforehand. On the other hand, if you fly Tuesday night, you're probably in better shape.

Flying on major holidays (Thanksgiving) is also good.

If you have the time, you can use Expert mode to scan the routes that you're considering a couple weeks out. E.g., if you're thinking about flying on a Friday in April, and today is January 6, check the loads for January 23 -- and then keep watching them for the next 2 weeks. You'll get an idea of which ones have R space a week or two out, and which ones are booked solid way ahead of time.

Finally, as others have noted, the longer flights are harder to upgrade. If you do HNL-EWR-FRA, the HNL-EWR leg is going to be a bear. If you do HNL-SFO-FRA, the SFO-FRA leg is going to be hard. Consider something like HNL-SFO-ORD-FRA, where each leg is a lower-demand upgrade.

Mikity

Thanks for all the responses!

I have to confess, there were a lot of terms and acronyms that were new to me I think I've managed to figure most of them out, but I still have a couple of questions:

• What do people mean when they are talking about "9"s regarding R space availability?
• How can I check the seat availability of a specific flight? On UA.com I can search by booking class, but it doesn't give me access to the seat map....or does it?

Mahalo!

IAH-OIL-TRASH

If you are in expert mode, you can click on fare class next to a flight search result to see all the fare classes. A number besides each tells you how many seats are available for each. The number tops out at 9, which means there is at least 9, maybe more. The total of the numbers (in most cases) does not denote the total number of seats. If you see front-cabin counts of F1, Z1, P1, for example, that means there is only one front cabin seat available (not 3, since F is 1), but you get also buy that seat as a Z or P fare with restrictions. You might see also F2, P1, which means there's 2 front-cabins seats for sale, one full-fare and one that can be bought as full fare or as a restricted fare.

Aloha!

azzurro

9's refer to the fare class having at least 9 tickets available for sale in that fare class (up to the max number left in that cabin, but the seat assignment screen is not a good indicator of that exact number of tickets available for sale or upgrade). You can see that when you enable 'expert mode' in your UA profile. A number less than 9 means that exact number of tickets is available. R and other classes are visible in the blue (pop-up) link for Fare Class on the right of each flight segment. Caution - connecting flights show lowest common denominator, so any single segment could have more tickets available, such as 1 or 2 vs. zero so you only want to pay attention to fare classes on direct flights that show on your search.

azzurro

Ah yes, the co-pay for M+ upgrade takes care of the higher fare cost comparison instead of paying more for W, so the good news is you only pay the extra cost when you confirm. I agree that Dreamliners have a higher % of J to Y but I would argue that I am more concerned with sheer number of available seats being more relevant to how many R fares they may open up. I am open to hearing a case explaining why that should be reconsidered though. Agreed on difficulty for upgrading SFO-FRA even with the most sheer number of J seats existing on 744.

JW76

In descending order of historical success rates:

#1: Buy a Business/First seat
#2: Buy an Upgrade if offered at booking or any other time.
#3: Redeem Miles and pay to upgrade
#4: Redeem RPU/GPU
#5: Pray for a CPU

whitethunder

Well specifically I'm flying SFO-HKG (UA869) next Thursday, January 15th

Open J seats on the seatmap have gone from over 20 down to nine then back up slightly now

I waitlisted with miles when I booked the ticket Dec 8th (as a 1K) but the UG still has not cleared. Currently sitting: F7 FN8 A7 ON6 O0 J9 JN9 C9 D9 Z8 ZN8 P1 PN0 R0 RN0 IN0 I0 Y7 YN7 B7 M7 E7 U7 H5 HN5 Q5 V3 W2 S0 T0 L0 K0 G0 N0 XN0 X0

E+ is almost completely full on the seatmap..

Since this was only a "K" fare just curious about my chances are from the experts out there, if not good I'm gonna have to buy an iphone external battery to rough in E+ it out haha

thanks

Kacee

Well there's always a chance, but if I were you I'd get that battery (and consider loading some good content on your device in case the streaming malfunctions).

Note that ORD is R4 on Jan. 15, but I think that will be a very expensive change right now. Check again at T-24 for SDC possibilities.

whitethunder

Thanks for the advice, I just bought a 13000mah portable power bank on amazon just in case

About the SDC, is that T-24 Hrs from the original SFO-HKG flight or T-24 Hours from the ORD-HKG flight (I've never SDC before) Thanks

Mikity

Thank you. Alas, the flights I have searched for so far show "R0, RN0" - and some don't show any "R" at all (mostly the international legs), what does that mean?

Am I ever going to get offered an upgrade while paying if there is no R space available?

Mahalo,