I was just reviewing my CPU clearance rate for this past year. only 33%. The lowest since going above Silver status

I had two IAD-MCO award tickets cleared last week. I had to cancel one of them. UA did not run CPU clearance until T-36h.

Today, 12/23, as a Silver (and I won't requal next year), I cleared an upgrade for tomorrow evening's flight at T-23.5. It's a Festivus Miracle! :D

Lowly Silver Just Cleared CPU For This Saturday
 

So this lowly silver, just got a text that my CPU cleared for my flight back to Denver tomorrow. As I understand it, Saturday is pretty slow day and Sunday / Monday is the heavy return back home day.

Any other lowly silvers clearing into First Class this Saturday or changing flights or plan on SDC'ing tomorrow onto an emptier flight to increase their chances? Having always been number "infinity" on the upgrade list, I never thought CPU would ever happen as a silver.

Congratulations!
Are you sure that United planes won't be fully packed tomorrow? I checked a few flights and upgrade standby lists are still very long (ORF-DEN, RIC-DEN and DEN-BUR, and DEN-SFO).
It might be true that GS/1K/PP/PG do not travel much on holidays, especially tomorrow. Premier Silver gets a chance to shine from Group 2.
Happy travel and Happy New Year.

LAX - DEN seems to be wide open, Had conversation with FA on the outbound flight and said Saturday is generally show for midweek Christmas, but Sunday and Monday is going to be wild.

Not my LAX-DEN flight on a Saturday (tomorrow). I'm #6 and #7 on the UG list and with PP applied.

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but aren't silvers supposed to clear on the day of? Was surprised when I got the notification at 30 hours before my flight. Beginning of this week, there were only 2 seats showing taken and watched starting at 96 hours, the seat map fill in. When it got to 48 and the golds cleared, with still 10 seats open, I was hopeful but, T minus 30, that was even a bigger surprise.

Flew FLL-DEN yesterday. At T-72, it said only half of the F cabin was booked; however, by T-36, there was only 2 seats remaining, and they were gone shortly before T-24 with no one on the upgrade list being upgraded. I was still surprised that I was around 9/10/11 as a Silver. TOD was $300 for the flight, so I imagine a few people bit on this for a 4+ hour flight (at one point, we were traveling at just 325mph ground speed at FL36).

Final result was 14 out of 15 people were all upgraded to First Class. I'm not counting the 2 people who waitlisted and were also added to the end of the list. Just the original 15 on the list. 20 First Class seats on my flight. Final 2 seats cleared before boarding. I'm going to guess that I was much higher on the upgrade priority thanks to my United Club Card, which for us silvers, has higher priority after fare class.

It seems with SDC and waitlisting, half empty planes, couple days out is really deceptive. Coach was half full before but in the end left 95% full after taking in all the wait listers and others.

No the UC card is only a factor after status and fare. So a Gold would have had a higher priority without a Chase Club Card. The Chase Club is a tie-breaker factor for those with the same status and fare.

Quote:

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Waitlist priority

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I think I have had 0 CPU's cleared as a 1K. I basically always apply PP because they end up expiring so I might as well use them!

I've got a flight at 7am on Wednesday morning, so less than 36 hours out... I am number 2 on the list as a 1K. Airport standby list is now available in flight status. 13 of 16 seats open and haven't cleared. Odd how this goes when other times I've cleared 3 days out and seat map only has 3-4 open seats.

Asked a contact at United... odd thing is out of all the Econ Plus seats on the 737-MAX8, only 4 or 5 are occupied. But she said the flight is overall oversold by 8, shows First booked to 3 passengers but only 3 available... maybe that impacts the CPU clearance because their system has reduced the amount to sell by the oversale amount. Hadn't seen this before but interesting data point.

I've seen this before as well; seems like it happens often around year end holiday period when everyone is buying Y tickets for their family travel. The app used to actually report blocked seats, and then you could see the relationship between the overtake and holding back upgrades directly. A little ironic because clearing an upgrade would reduce the oversale, but anyway that's what they do.