cesco.g

Yeah, when travelling with family it might be. But, I had my 18-year old kid travelling on his own on a domestic award scooping a CPU, and felt that such an upgrade much more belonged to a loyal 1K!
Now, if it is being TODs-ed out to a kettle - which is hard to know - I might have different feelings about it.

nauce

@kevanyalowitz -- You are right. The SEA team is Bomb! Which is why I've stayed 1 year beyond what I would have.

@jgsx - To my knowledge, everything I said was true, and from first hand experience. With that said, maybe I wasn't as clear as I could have been.

When I talked about upgrades for other people going away, I was talking about CPUs for non-gs traveling on inherited status. And no, I don't agree that it going away was a good thing.

nauce

Just to follow-up on this, I feel like I'm doing something wrong when I talk with United. I understand that YMMV, but so many of you are claiming waved change fees.

I just called to change a first-class ticket ($10k) to another date. They told me it would be $450 for the change. I politely hung up (pretended like I was disconnected). I tried back twice more. Same treatment from two other GS agents. I asked all 3 about waving the fee, and only one said she'd do it if I bumped the ticket up to full-fare, which was another $7k.

What am I missing? Is there a secret trick you use?

FWIW, I'm totally friendly over the phone. Never an ........ If they are rude, I just hang up and call back. I have to wonder if I'm 'doing it wrong?'

cesco.g

Sometimes change fees incurr on fully flexible international tickets, due to variations in the foreign exchange rates.

feobrien

Have to chime in on the comment regarding UCs. It is all very airport dependent. I fly out of EWR and even before all of the construction finding a seat can be a challenge. There have been many times where I walk in, walk through the Club, then back out.

flyerbaby19

Wow, what flight has a $17k full fare price? I've never seen anything that expensive. Would anyone ever pay that much? (although I'm equally surprised someone paid $10k for a ticket also)

Eastbay1K

MVPG for 1MM.

Other than a few little things, I had a much better ride as a 1K for the better part of a decade (when it was the top status) than a GS does now. One of the best perks was the 1K rooms in the 6 domestic hubs (including SEA). Agents who perform near superhuman tasks, and a quiet space to hang out otherwise, when the lounges were too full.

I don't currently have enough spend or travel for GS or similar, but have been a "free agent" for several years now. I maintain AS MVPG (+ 75K certain years), am a UA MM, and since I'm paying for most of my travel in premium cabins, I just look to book something where I can bank it. I even joined DL this year (due to the AS divorce). It is all good enough.

bldr1k

It was a good thing for us GS fliers trying to get upgraded but now I end up paying for E+ every time family members fly... I wish it would at least allow someone on a full 50K award ticket to get into e+.

porciuscato

I saw another massive GS failure at SFO yesterday. Flight #901 to LHR which was going to be my last 747 flight, got cancelled. Maybe half a dozen GS passengers on the flight. Only 1 GS agent came when the flight was cancelled.

As I've experienced several times this years, the agent tried every money saving option possible to avoid a higher fare class or another airline. Though I was on a Z fare, she tried to stick me in red-eye coach flights and Transcontiinental 737s in economy-, etc. Really quite incredible.

dll

I'm in the reverse scenario of the OP here - I'm ExPlt on AA, considering switching back to UA for 2018 travel. I'm currently 1K on a status match challenge. My first trip on the challenge ended yesterday. It was a trip to China in paid business.

Outbound was fantastic aside from a truly horrendous LAX check-in experience that I documented elsewhere.

Return flight was 90 minutes late leaving from China due to heavy fog (not UA's fault, obviously). Pilots and cabin crew were fantastic, very good experience in-flight. Toward SFO I decided to hop on UA inflight wifi to look into rebooking options as I knew we'd miss our connection.

On AA I'm used to interacting with agents via Twitter which seems to have the best results - I find a flight I'd like to be protected on, Tweet them my PNR via DM and they confirm it. Works almost every time.

Perhaps Twitter isn't UA's strength? Found ample availability on the next UA flight, so I tweeted them my PNR and asked if they could protect me on the next flight. Their response?

"This channel is strictly for revenue customers."

I responded and reinforced I am a revenue customer (1K at that, although I didn't say that). Not sure why they'd assume otherwise.

They then responded to say that since I'm in customs/immigration, I should be able to make my original flight.

Had they even bothered to check in the PNR they would have known I was a revenue customer and in fact, still in-flight.

Nevertheless, I then pulled up the UA app and rebooked it myself easily.

Twitter support? Major
UA app functionality? ^

Not sure I'm convinced I'd be better off on UA in 2018 at this point.

aCavalierInCoach

Any color on this one? I was tracking that flight as the slated aircraft for mine downline. Looked like a mechanical delay, then an ops delay, then a crew delay, then cancelled? Seemed like a mess.

findark

Sounds like they stole the frame and crew in order to get ICN out.

porciuscato

A spectacular cluster thing. First a problem with the PA system, then they stole a pilot for another flight. A replacement pilot drove from Sacramento, but he had insufficient rest to fly.... So a 1-hour delay expanded to 7 hours -- 30 minutes at a time -- and then they cancelled. The bottom line was that the flight was only about 30% full, so it was probably cheaper not to fly it.

GS could have really proved their worth in this instance, but they failed......spectacularly. The SFO GS crew is the absolute worst in the system. What a disgrace. My re-routing was eventually solved by a regular CS agent, who offered me far better options than the GS rep. I'm just now writing a letter praising him.

greg99

IME, Twitter is far less useful with than 1Kvoice email or even calling reservations. I only tweet a question/request if I'm OK with a canned response. The only benefit is that you'll get a canned response faster.

aCavalierInCoach

The thing I noticed about this one was that the F and C cabins seemed to have seats occupied long after the flight had cancelled, suggesting it was taking a long time to accommodate folks. Y was completely open. I'm SFO-based so see less. LAX, IAH, and EWR have all been relatively impressive to me this year.