Can't find any upgrade availability through united.com
 

Is united.com now blocking visibility of flights with upgrade award availability. I've tried in vain to find any flights LHR-EWR-LHR that doesn't say waitlist only. I've checked this in expert mode many months in advance and even tried difference city pairs, domestic and international. I can't say I've checked every possible combination of course but is anyone else having the same problem?

Welcome to Flyertalk, uknighted!

R space has been increasingly difficult to find of late. It has not totally dried up, but in my experience, it is about as sparse as I have ever seen it. It is not United.com blocking it, just United not making any upgrades available.

Related thread: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...-nowadays.html

Thanks for the reply. Even looking 7 to 8 months in advance there's nothing. It seems as if they've pulled all advance upgrade award availability and are leaving it to the wait list to manage (forcing customers to commit to higher fares).

I'd be curious to hear if anyone has been able to find availability on any route at any time in the future.

If you are flexible with dates and airports, it won't be hard to find. Check FRA, AMS, MUC, CDG & to not just EWR, but to airports like IAD, ORD,IAH. you will have to take positioning flights, but if space is confirmable on those, take it. UA wants to play the game, you play it with your rules.

I have spent literally hours for the past few weekends and late evenings during the week trying all that for different planned trips with flexibility on dates. Both TATL and TPAC. I have applied all 6 GPUs with all waitlisted.

I have one more trip to book and looking for "P" fares and if I can find one for less than $1,700 outbound the return prices out at more then $3,500 for a price in excess of $5,000. I have enormous flexibility on dates in June returning July and as I will meet my PQD for the year suspect I will not end up with an "016" ticket.

As my plans are always known long term I can confirm your experience this year is the same as mine. 2017 reminds me of my 2014 experience and inability to use GPUs which expired unused as always waitlisted and rarely upgraded that year.

First world problem, albeit frustrating.

Depends on your definition of "hard." I've been flying out of IAD TATL for 17 years, and R availability has never been so sparse. Even the usual "always available" IAD-BRU routinely shows R0 these days.

That's OK, though. I've come to really like Premium Economy on AF, BA, SK and LH.

Are you searching just the overwater segment, EWR-LHR? Recommend you do that, as searching from a non-hub will negatively skew your results.

I did a quick search and saw some R on EWR-LHR but it was pretty limited. These things will often come in bunches and right now looks to be a dry spell.

Yes, I found R space (R=3) on both TPA-EWR-HKG outbound, and HKG-ORD-TPA return in April. These were both Tuesday flights, I'm Premier Platinum and have the MP Explorer Card.

I just confirmed NRT-SFO for early June . . . there was lots of R on various TPAC routes.

And this thread has been very active lately: GPU Success [2017]

Thanks all for the responses. I see there are much lower cost options on LH via MUC and may wind up doing that and save the miles for another day when UA are feeling more generous with their R inventory. From the sampling I've done and unless they release more it's going to be a very dry year.

Ended up booking my LHR flight in June via NZ in Premium Economy. Looks like the old UA J class seats. Looking forward to trying the seats. Return airfare less than one way with UA.