SebastianMUC

Howdy,

I was looking for R space on an upcoming flight and stumbled on some interesting thing.

When crawling for UA46 IAH-FRA on Feb/16 you get
J0 JN0 C0 D0 Z0 ZN0 P0 PN0 R0
and consequently: Business not available.

Surprisingly, when checking the reservation tab both me and a colleague are offered to purchase an upgrade - with an availability of 4.
This kinda confused me, as it seemed all the business buckets seemed empty.

On top of that: When checking for business availability via lh.com I can also find UA46/LH7600 with availability in J.

Anyone an idea, why they are not showing availability of any of the business class buckets in expert mode, not selling them... but offering paid upgrades?
... and, to which buckets do paid upgrades track btw?

RobOnLI

ExpertFlyer and expert mode on UA.com both show the same availability for this flight now (J8 JN8 C8 D8 and the rest zero).

A few things may explain this:
1. They temporarily zeroed out the business buckets as they were adjusting inventory (most likely);
2. The data feed to expert mode on the web site was broken temporarily and fixed itself.
3. Someone really had just put all 8 remaining business seats on hold but then cancelled them.

As for which bucket to track...R is used for instrument-supported upgrades using GPUs or miles.

-RM

SebastianMUC

Thanks for the reply.
Now it gets more interesting - In case I change region from Germany-English where i still get:
J0 JN0 C0 D0 Z0 ZN0 P0 PN0 R0

to US-English I get (same as you reported):
J8 JN8 C8 D8 Z0 ZN0 P0 PN0 R0

So, we can add to your list:

4) no fare bucket availability for your location-of-sales

Something I totally did not have on my radar

It was clear to me that GPUs and mile upgrades track to R - but do paid upgrades track there as well (which was my question)?

mozilla

OP didn't mention the POS he selected on ExpertFlyer.

Selecting the Germany POS, as could be a possibility for this flight, still gives all zeroes for business.

It depends on which paid upgrade, there are multiple money-only routes.

But I guess you the mean "GG BUYUP/Buy Up to Business/First", aka the Premium Cabin Upsell, which can be done anytime before checkin if prompted. These should book into an available paid business/first bucket.