ReverendCJM

yes, 30K, had 60 on the brain. flight is on a Friday night tho

jsloan

Friday night is tougher but not impossible. I'm not making any guarantees -- just that you probably have a better chance, as no-status members, on that flight than on any other long-haul flight in the entire network.

The cash buy-up price may drop as departure approaches, also.

FlyerMad27

Just my imagination - hypothetical situation and won't actually consider doing given risk and ethics. Given how hard it is to clear Polaris upgrades these days, what if say you book a Y ticket and request the upgrade. You also 'block' 6-9 seats in J by booking fully refundable tickets using different names and hit cancel maybe 24-48 hrs before departure. Has anyone tried this? Based on trends, will the system release lots of PZ space or at least higher % of upgrades clearing (assuming those who were going to purchase the J seats would go to a different flight/airline). I'm guessing it's very high risk as if United denies the refund, you'll be on the hook for close to $50K in some instances. Also i'm sure it probably violates UA t&c but not sure if anyone has done research on this.

findark

Yes, it's been done. It's a well-known approach that will almost certainly get you into lots of trouble with United.

WineCountryUA

First I heard about this was 30+ years ago and it was well worn by then. 20 years ago when I first joined FT, there was report of someone getting kicked out of MP for doing this and they only blocked a couple of seats.

Air carriers have long used big data mining and now AI to detect these well know anomalies.