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.

Kmxu

49 booked, but only 42 checked in. The flight left with 8 seats unoccupied. Were GAs lazy? The pax on Polaris WL was probably not too happy! 😂 I am not too unhappy because it saved me 60 PlusPoints. Mrs Kmxu cleared PremiumPlus but waitlisted for Polaris.

rktj

Family of 3 booked in Premium Plus ORD-HND end of May. Buy up offer to Polaris is $4,700 or waitlist for 30K miles +$450. Currently lots of availability in Polaris. Assuming no status, what would be a guess of chances of clearing the waitlist? Trying to decide if it is worth transferring CC points over or not. Thanks!

WineCountryUA

Day of the week?
O, A or R fare?

rktj

Monday (Memorial Day). R Fare

cfischer

always hard to predict with such holidays, but this will take some business travel out of the equation, so I’d say even on an R fare, changes are probably pretty good. ORD-TYO also has quite a few flights a day.

CLPatch

Greetings to all. Long time reader who is thankful for the many insights gained over the years. Currently booked as shown above and tracking upgrade chances. Noticing in expert mode it shows J6 for flight. However, in flight status upgrades show as 18 booked out of 20. I am #3 on waitlist. This seems out of sync. Also see J6 for 1493 from SAT - IAH earlier on the 25th, but showing 17 booked out of 20 in upgrade status. Flt 1895 from IAH to PHX same day shows J3 with 19 booked out of 20. Any thoughts on what is occurring?