johnkrevy

Hi,
I am going to be flying from Newark to Nassau on United in November. At present, there are 4 first class seats remaining. My friend gave me his rpu, which has been applied to my reservation and I am on a waiting list. I am a regular mileage plus member with a United Explorer card and my fare is "H". Just curious if anyone has an opinion as to my chances of getting upgraded (I am assuming they are fairly low).

njcommodore

Called UA and they said it's booked 28/48 (suggesting to me that it would be a Polaris retrofit cabin). However, in looking at the seat map for tonight and tomorrow's flights, I don't see any retrofits being used and they're not selling seats in F. So are they just writing off that no one will want to buy a seat in F and then giving the seats to employees who have listed for it??

StuckinITH

You will know if it's a retrofit 48 hours before the flight (but as we have experienced it it can change back to an original 2-4-2 on day of departure).

They are not selling seats in F as it might be a retrofit and then it's a problem if passengers had paid a F Class ticket and they find themselves in Polaris Business. It happened to somebody on another flight who was wondering where was his First Class seat. The FA tried to tell him it was all the same but I hope he got a refund as at that time F was selling for way more than Business.

Passengers in high fares Business can waitlist GPUs or miles to sit on these F seats (cannot be Z or P fares). There was one report that after the flight where the passenger got a F seat, the GPUs were returned so they are only used to waitlist for those seats. If there are not enough passengers wanting to waitlist, yes, those seats will go to non-revs.

Obviously your chances for the upgrade to Business increase significantly if you get a retrofit plane.

findark

The currently assigned type has 8F and 40J. They will sell 48 J inventory up until departure, and then:

(a) run any supported upgrades from J to F,
(b) truncate to 40 J,
(c) op-up from J to F if necessary
(d) move the pilot from J to F if there is space, freeing up 1 additional J seat,
(e) clear NRSAs directly into F if there is space, and finally
(f) fly with empty F seats if any are left

After this process, any remaining J seats may be filled with upgrades.

StuckinITH

To further the explanation of this for the benefit of the OP. This will only happen if they have oversold Economy, and they need to open space in Business to place some Economy passengers in those seats. However, at this point that flight does not seem like it's oversold in Economy since it's even S9 or T9.

njcommodore

So if there are people waiting to upgrade from Y to J they will move the pilot from J to F to free up that seat?

StuckinITH

Not always. Coming back from PVG in January, I was Number 1 on the upgrade list from the time of check-in to the time of boarding. I never got upgraded. My wife was in First Class and she said that there were two seats empty in First Class and seat 6B still empty in Business.

In May, I did not like my seat in Business so asked at the gate if they were opening seat 6B since there were empty seats in First Class. The answer was no. That seat remained empty the whole flight and the pilots used the two seats in First Class.

764toHI

UA78 NRT-EWR on the Wednesday after Veteran's Day (11/14) - what are my chances of clearing a GPU as a gold? Mid-week but looks like UA is only selling C and J fares right now (ugh).

findark

As StuckinITH notes, it's somewhat inconsistent. They will usually move up the pilot if there is an empty F seat, but it has nothing to do with whether there are additional upgrades waiting from Y to J -- it's just about getting the pilot a nicer rest seat. If the agent is motivated, they may release the inventory block and run a Y -> J upgrade, but no guarantees.

As an aside, this frequently causes 6B to be empty for all or most of the flight, which is why 6A is accorded as the best seat in J

Kacee

No.

njcommodore

Well to close the story I checked this morning to see R3. Called reservations and the first agent kept me on hold 11 minutes and did nothing except transfer me to the MPSC (and then dropped off the call). MPSC couldn't help. HUCA and got an awesome agent who pushed through the upgrade without having to cancel it and re-request. Grabbed the last aisle seat, now all that are left are the 10 middles. I'll still keep an eye out later this week for a swap out to a reconfigured Polaris bird.

dcikid12

J9 JN9 C9 D7 Z0 ZN0 P0 PN0 R0 RN0 IN0 I0 Y9 YN

1k with two Y-Class tickets for January 7 2019, used to GPUs on the fare. Anyone have an opinion?

Kacee

Booked 29/48, which is very very bad this far out. Sunday 1/6 is booked 18/48, which is still not great. Wednesday 1/9 is booked 3/48. That's what you want to see.

dcikid12

NARITA has similar availability as well.

Kacee

Yes I checked that. You're flying on a high demand day. Business capacity on TPACs tends to equalize - when the cabin fills on one route (say HKG) pax will start to route via others (say NRT or ICN). UA sees this coming and will tighten inventory accordingly..