FLT 844 Sunday 10 Jan, 2016 - J9 but no R space. Why?
 

GRU-ORD

OK, Why is there no R space. J9 and tons of open seats. Two days away, are GPU's becoming worthless in advance or am I missing something. Thanks in advance for your help.

It appears that even with plenty of seats UA waits till the last minute (24 hours) in the hope that people will either buy full fare Biz or pay $1000 and up for an upgrade. Happened to me all last year on flights regardless of city pairs! I always cleared just after check-in and declining the upgrade offer.

Because UA wants to sell the seats.

Can we pin the thread about upgrade space being released to the top of the forum?

Over the last 6 months I've seen them up-selling these seats at check-in rather than applying GPUs, and then 1 hour before the flight they process the GPUs.

So the answer is, advanced R space is being eliminated. They've had 330 days to sell 48 seats, and 2 days from now, there are still 20 plus seats. In fact all four flights from GRU have tons of open seats, yet no R space. Are they expecting a herd of premium customers?

A herd, no. A gaggle of people willing to drop miles & $$$, you bet.

Your chance of clearing is good, but as noted above, it'll probably happen at the gate.

That's an oversimplification.

R availability has always been limited and releases have always been unpredictable (except for the releases at T-24, which were mostly eliminated about a year ago).

In recent years, UA has increasingly sought to sell BF seats at check-in before releasing them for upgrade. This is particularly true on the TATL and South America routes. Advance R space is still relatively easy to find TPAC (depending on day and destination). And it can still be found in advance on some of the TATL and South America flights, but it's not easy.

Someone starts one of these "BF is wide open why isn't UA opening any upgrade space" threads at least once per week (sometimes daily), so forgive the jaded responses.

I complained to 1KVoice and got this canned response:

"MileagePlus and United works within a budget to provide you with a set of benefits that recognize your loyalty. We recognize that the ability to redeem upgrades is an important benefit and while we empathize with your concerns that upgradeable seats are not being made available as early, as many, or as often, United is a business that must make fiscally sound decisions on how best to use and market the resources and products available to run a profitable, sustainable operation. While I understand your frustration that some of the destinations we serve are sometimes unavailable for use with upgrades, please know that the vast majority of destinations are available at different times of the year. Regardless, your feedback about award availabilities is important to us and will help formulate decisions to create an airline receptive to your needs."

Wow, an honest answer. ^

Thanks for your response...I understand, but this one just seemed out of the "norm." It was the number of open seats (this close in) that bothered me. Surely there is enough data to show they can satisfy all stakeholders, not just the additional revenue ones.

Yes, and a very sensible one.

My issue was the growing spread between GS and 1K instrument availability. (Seeing PN9 R0 more and more...). This demonstrates the relative value of 1Ks to them vs. GS, so the numbers speak for themselves I guess. I just wanted to make sure this availability logic is intentional and not a system/operational quirk...

Just because a particular flight does not have R availability does not mean no flight ever does. I've seen plenty of R space. For example, ORD-CDG on 4/7 is R3 and on 4/8 is R7. You can turn around and come home on Monday and confirm that too.

I just flew in Feb 2015 to and from GRU with two GPUs confirmed in advance.

Also, how do you know they don't already have several people who confirmed with GPUs on that very flight?

Because I called and there is still wide open space, J9. On every flight that day out of Brazil.

I'd be frustrated too. But booked 22/40 in BF, so strong likelihood you will ultimately clear.

UA does err both ways here. I've confirmed GPUs and RPUs in advance on flights that subsequently sold out completely and my upgrade represented a full fare ticket they were unable to sell. (Last spring was at the counter at JFK where a guy was begging to buy two walk up full fare tickets on a ps flight where my girlfriend and I were confirmed on RPUs).

Yes, exactly. They may have an initial quota of, say, five upgrades, which has already been reached.

My understanding is PN usually maps to P, so complaining about the PN <> R spread is like complaining about P <> R spread. Customer Care just responded to you explaining why there's a P <> R spread, and by extension, the same answer applies to PN <> R.

That's a non-answer by UA. It's fairly common to see P9 PN0 (but you will never see the converse).

Their algorithm is set to open PN in certain circumstances and R in others. The reality is that UA is much looser with PN than with R, and that is a deliberate policy favoring GS. (Note that on flights with BF, PN has no purpose other than GS upgrades.)

That doesn't mean they never had R availability on that flight. Maybe every person who's currently sitting in BusinessFirst is an upgrade already. Either way I'd say your chances of being upgraded are pretty good. I think this is one of the easiest flights to upgrade.

Thank You!

Just think of it like one of those Black Friday sales where they advertise they have cheap or free merchandise. However, if you actually go there, you find out they only had one.

UA advertises this upgrade benefit (GPU, RPU, CPU, Miles, etc) however they don't advertise the actual numbers. Sure there is R availability, but you have to be really flexible and/or lucky to actually find it in advance. In some ways, upgrading at the gate is more "fair" in that the upgrade is based on the list which is ranked in some way. When you apply an instrument at booking, you are grabbing that upgrade where perhaps some higher paying or higher status passenger is missing out.

For me, much of my intl travel is leisure so I don't book an intl flight unless R is available and am willing to set my dates, duration, routing around that. Some must travel on certain dates and dont have that luxury.

P and PN were delinked a while ago, they're randomly consistent now. J/JN, Z/ZN, Y/YN, H/HN are all still linked AFAIK. O/ON are not linked AFAIK.