Open J Class Seat Bidding Made It To The Your Suggestion List
 

Not sure if this has been discussed but it looks like the open J seat bidding has made it to "Your Ideas" list on United Air Time.

Is that under the heading, "Let's Make 1K Upgrade Instruments Even More Worthless"?

Include making CPU worthless and reward tickets impossible with that.


SL

Or lets figure out a way to potentially dilute our product and piss off our employees.

I can't see this ending well. While as a passenger I would like the option to upgrade into J and not pay a ridiculously high fee, it basically creates a situation which is much like domestic first. People came to expect an upgrade and avoiding buying the seat outright. Relatively speaking, they seemed to combat this by pricing F at not ridiculously high pricing points to try and offer it as a sell-up. I believe paid F is accounts for a higher portion of the cabin vs the past.

J is priced significantly higher than Y and "generally" doesn't fill up at the same rate. Knowing this, I could see people buying Y and holding out for the option to bid for a seat. Granted there isn't the same guarantee that the bid will be accepted, but it would be interested to see how they manage this in a scenario such as this:

T-72 2 seats in J; of the following scenarios who gets the seat (or what does the airline value most from a revenue perspective):
1) 1K booked on N fare using a GPU
2) non-status passenger booked on T fare offering $750
3) Silver booked on Y fare offering $500
4) RM holds out in hopes for last minute J bookings

As for the employees, one of the last benefits is the ability to pass ride internationally in premium cabins since they typically leave with open seats. There are some people who don't believe that employees should be able to have these seats (I'm not one of them) but lets not get into that. One of the biggest concerns that came up with the "Basic Economy" concept were that employees saw that as a significant impact to the ability to pass ride in already full cabins. The response from UA was that they didn't expect that it would have an impact and it "might" make more seats in F available because Basic Economy passengers would be ineligible for upgrade....ummkay whatever you want to say since the people currently upgrading into F would not be the demographic that would be buying Basic Economy.

The question is, what bid is United willing to take rather than process a GPU?

One might say, well, $100 cash is better than processing a GPU, but you start doing that nobody is going to pay your business fares....

It seems that given so much of the profitability of long haul flights is driven by business class revenue United can't risk undermining their own pricing too much.

Then again, if you take your paid loads from 80% to 100%, suppose you don't need the same revenue per seat....

Indeed it is. Makes my decision to stop pursuing 1K 2 years ago a very smart move.....

In fairness, the comment references watching business class seats going out unused. I'd be fine with this as long as they process all waitlisted upgrades first.

Airtime seems like an afterthought lately. The last substantive update was in October. Reading through the suggestions, it doesn't seem like there's any correlation between what gets posted and what actually comes to pass.

But yeah, feel free to get worked up over this! ;)

CPUs maybe, but no reason they can't continue to make award seats available in advance, consistent with current yield management practices (saver vs. regular).

Current yield management practices may be altered if the expected value of the bids exceed the implied value of the award ticket.

I'm much more annoyed at the changes to award booking and how RPU have been rendered virtually worthless this year as UA has basically stopped opening R on most routes. But UA has otherwise treated me well the past couple years and it's not like there are other options out there that are overall more attractive.

That said, it is mildly disturbing to think they may be getting ready to pitch upgrade bidding as "something you, our customers, asked for." That is a particularly odious aspect of many recent program devaluations (Yes Hyatt, I'm talking to you here.)

As a long-time UA customer and FT member, this is my take on the suggestion. It's similar to many questions by customers published to Airtime. Some have been/will be implemented, some have/will not.

If UA wants more premium revenue, how about starting an actual premium economy cabin like AA or Delta?

For personal travel, if I have to choose between $1000 for 10-abreast E"+" on UA or $1600-$2000 for domestic-first-quality premium economy on DL or AA or one of the intentional airlines? PE, no question.

Yes, except that scenario 1) is—for proper J seats on international flights—with W+ fare class, which makes the bidding suggestion even more insulting.

That is just the news update date for their news. They actually do update other parts of the site regularly. I visit it about once a month. Discovered this during this months visit.