Flying SFO - TPE this Friday (12/15). I see:

PN4 PZ3

I'm considering throwing some miles/dollars at an upgrade. If I do so, I'm not sure about my odds. I see 15 seats open on the map right now, and moreover am curious how I interpret the upgrade waitlist and if that reflects people paying/waitlisting for upgrades via miles/points/dollars?

The upgrade should clear right away. It'll tell you if it'll clear before you actually pay the miles and cash, go and try.

Says waitlist. Maybe many others are trying to pay for upgrade?

i also see a bunch of people on the waitlist and it's at PN3 PZ3 rn. Theoretically new requests will clear immediately and UA will start sweeping the list soon. If you are already waitlisted, remove it and reapply right away

Ok that was really helpful. My apologies for not being super straightforward. I actually applied money/miles last week or maybe even the week before. I kinda forget. It's been one crazy month of work I've lost track of time. I wanted to treat my partner. But it was waitlisted. As I looked over the past few days, I saw so many open seats that it made me wonder if it would sometime clear. Then after doing a crash course on expert mode, I was confused when I saw PN/PZ > 0 and us not being cleared yet.

I called to cancel the upgrade and because I had some leftover PP from previous failed upgrades from Thanksgiving travel, I applied PP to my partner's upgrade (cleared immediately), and threw money/points at myself. Better to have used the PP than to let it go to waste, so that was a good idea.

So maybe the lesson is not to apply upgrades too early? Or only do it when upgrade space is available?

glad you were able to clear and jumping over all those people :)!

You should always apply the upgrades as soon as possible but at the same time monitor PN/PZ availability. Think of it as if there are two systems - revenue management and upgrade automation systems. RM decides when to release what inventory while upgrade automation processes upgrades in batches. There's usually a time delay in between as they each have their own schedule and are not synchronized. If you were to wait a few hours after upgrade automation has been run, you would not have been able to skip the waitlist and PN/PZ would have gone to 0.

basically you were lucky to catch the PN/PZs that were recently released by RM and that have not been consumed by upgrade automation

Got it. All these years of flying and I probably didn't know what I was doing. Yet when it comes to restaurant reservations, I've run auto reload on Resy to find me openings on the day of--sometimes I'd tell my friends "don't worry, I don't have a reservation yet, but I know next Thursday night I can snag us a spot within 30 minutes of our target." Had I known this is how it works, I probably could've made many of those PP upgrades work. A lot went to waste with the pandemic.

I didn't realize that's how the system works, but it totally makes sense reading your explanation and seeing a few other posts talk about the sweep system. So basically keep an eye out. I was super nervous asking the agent over the phone to cancel the upgrade since I didn't know what would happen at all.

And just for my understanding, prior to jumping the queue, I was number 20 or so. Does that mean there are 19 other people who did PP/Miles/Money upgrades and are waitlisted as well? What convinced me to try was that with 15 openings, and number 20, I'd never get there, so might as well cancel, and if there are no good miles/PP/money offers, I'd still be in the same place in the end anyway.

Yes, that's precisely what it means. If you hadn't paid attention, you never would have cleared. Well done. :)

it's now at J3 and of course PN0 PZ0 :)

Well done! 😄 You have just sharpened y😄ur restaurant reservation skills from FT.

So I am curious to get your opinion on my chances of an upgrade. Flying Sunday, January 14, UA 953 ORD-MUC. Currently booked in R, a 1K friend applied PP to waitlist for two seats to Polaris. Currently Polaris is booked 17/44 and we are spots 3 & 4 (of 9) on the Polaris waitlist. PremiumPlus is currently booked 16/21, and it looks like United is willing to oversell by 1.

We have no status on UA anymore 🙃.

Open relevant fare buckets are:

• J9
• JN9
• C9
• D9
• Z9
• ZN9
• P9
• PN0
• PZ0
• IN0
• I0
• O6
• ON6
• A3
• R0
• RN0

Our return BER-EWR flight on a Saturday cleared from R to Polaris back in mid-November, which seems very early! That flight no longer shows PN or PZ availability.

What’s your status?

Judging by the part where they say no status anymore, I'd assume no status.

no status, just the credit card

J9 on expert mode but App says Polaris is full
 

I am just able to see the WLs of my Sunday flight on United App. It says “Polaris cabin is full.” When I search my flight, the expert mode says “J9 C9 D7 Z5 P4 O1.” Premium Plus cabin has one seat open on seat map. Polaris cabin has 11 seats not selected. Do you trust United App more than “expert mode?” What is really going on on my flight? Any guess?

Normally, I trust the App more than united.com. For my flight, these two agree with each other. So, I guess that the WLs now mirror each other between the website and App.