It's not just E+ selection. No seat selection is allowed even for 1K and UA CC holders, right? For me, seat selection and at least one checked bag is important. It would be a nice gesture from UA to reward its elites and get BE pricing.

UA wants its elites to buy regular Y. They offer BE pricing to price match LCC and appear at the top of kayak searches.

There is no charge for anyone (not on a BE ticket) to gate check, even if you've already used your baggage allowance or had a 0 bag allowance. At that point they want people to check to avoid overhead bin congestion and get the flight out on time.

If I have two bags and a 1 bag allowance, and I don't want to deal with my second bag during a long connection, etc., I will usually check one bag at the counter, bring the second to the gate and check it there for free and board with just my personal item.

On a BE ticket they are supposed to charge $25 gate check fee plus the normal bag check fee. But I'm not aware of how universally this is enforced.

Uh, no. UA wants their elites to spend more.

David

Thanks, but I am wondering if they wouldn't try to charge a gate check fee if I took 2 carry-on bags to the gate and asked to check one in. That would be weird to have two carry-ons at the gate!

Yes, it would nice if UA gave elite a ticket discount and all their benefits but both??? UA chose a compromise of discount and some benefits. One can ask for the moon but it is a business

I guess it could happen but I've just never seen anything like that.

If you're worried about it, you and your friend approach GA together, your friend holds your bag while you check his bag on your PNR. Then later you take your bag back and board with it.

Unless your friend isn’t taking any carry-on they could take one bag and you the other one. If it’s one passenger with two bags that will surely bring attention

I've decided I'm going to give this a try (again). Remember last time I booked BE I wound up chickening out and rebooked regular Y for $150 more. This time regular Y is over $300 more so I'm pretty sure I'll stick with BE unless I decide not to take the trip entirely.

Interestingly, the outbound is 99% full in the back. After booking I plugged my flights into EF so I can track them and realized the EWR-Europe flight is Y1...H1. I'm booked in "T" as a basic economy fare. Plenty of seats open on the seat map so I imagine plenty of BE fares. No clue if they treat 1K passengers on BE "better" (meaning they auto assign us better seats). Does anyone know how the auto assignment of seats works? Anyone figure out if it's back to front? Based on status? Time of ticketing? Just wondering. It's a 7 hour flight eastbound but it is a red eye. I prefer a window but it's not the end of the world as I won't sleep on the flight anyway.

Flight departs in 3 calendar days. Will update if I wind up taking it and how the seating situation is handled for all four flights.

-RM

I want to know too. I would love to save $150 for my tatl fares if I could.

Personally I think you will be fine, because you’re a savvy flyer, you’re a 1K, and you could always change at the gate. Keep us posted. As an aside, I like the funny comment that you chickened out last time..

Some time last night I was auto-assigned seats for my flights on Friday. The short-hop to EWR I was assigned an aisle in E- on a CRJ550. The long haul I was assigned 32D which is an aisle. My profile says I prefer window so that obviously makes no difference in BE seating. The flight is on a 757-200 and oddly it shows that there is no middle seat in that row. EF confirms this. There is now only a single E- seat available for selection in the last row, a window. If there really is no middle seat in that row I'd be happy with the aisle.

So far I can say: I was not assigned E+ (not expecting it), I was given a seat about midway through the cabin based on the open seat map last night (meaning 1Ks aren't assigned seats first as far as I can tell), UA dumped all E- seats to BE roughly 2.5 days before the flight.

I already cancelled that ticket and rebooked it this morning as the fare went down $20 :) We'll see what I'm re-assigned for a seat. I'm curious if it will happen during the day or if UA only does the assignment overnight, similar to how they're doing CPU processing now. Will continue to report back.

PS - yeah, I plan to ask for E+ at the gate or the lounge in EWR. Hopefully they will accommodate me.

-RM

on my international BE flights I've consistently gotten a $35 buy up to an E+ seat.

How?

interesting call on the cancellation I guess you were within 24 hours.. in the end I think it’s going to work out and you’re going find the type of seat that you like in E+ Just keep an eye on the seat map day of travel