Jaylyn Skinner

I recently booked an Economy Plus seat from IAH to SYD and paid 30,000 miles plus a $600 copay to be Waitlisted for an upgrade to United Polaris. I notice there are tons of business class seats still available. Do they wait to see if people pay full price for these before allowing mileageplus upgrades? I'm wondering if I even have a chance of an upgrade and if so, when will I find out? Flight is about 2 months away. I've never been waitlisted before when upgrading. Does anyone have experience with this?

Often1

It is a little bit more complicated than that, but the bottom line us "yes". Not necessarily full price and it is also based on predictive software rather than simply waiting. Also, what makes you believe that there are "tons" of J seats? If it is the seat map, that is perhaps a very rough indicator, but certainly not accurate.

In the simplest terms, UA believes that it will sell those seats and would rather be proven wrong later than to have let them go now and then turned away others later.

Jaylyn Skinner

Yeah, seat map still shows about 30 seats "open"

escapefromphl

They use some sort of revenue management system and open the upgrade space periodically depending on loads etc. You may want to look at this thread Upgrade still waitlisted even though PZ (previously R) class is available it's probably your best shot if you see open PZ space, if you have no status.

kevflyer

What's the day of your flight?

Jaylyn Skinner

A Wednesday, April 1

canadiancow

Flight is PN0 with a GS waitlisted, so there's a long way to go before a no/low-status upgrade is cleared, even though it's currently wide open.

fumje

How do you know one of the waitlisted passengers is GS?

Inventory is indeed PN0, but it is P9, which is a vague sign for slight hope (yes, heavily qualified).

There are 5 on the waitlist now, and it is booked 13/48.

I think generally IAH-SYD is not terrible, but I have limited experience with it.

canadiancow

I have lots of friends who fly UA

Jaylyn Skinner

Hmmmm....How about dumbing it down for me y�all? I don�t understand what all of this means! Also, how can you see the waitlist? Or know how many are on it?

WineCountryUA

UA will not release upgrade space when UA thinks there is a chance they can sell the seat.

Additionally, if UA is going to provide upgrade space it prefers to provide it to elites, the waitlist priority is based on status, purchased fare and time of request (additional factors for CPU eligible flights)

Looking at present inventory, via UA's "ExpertMode", one looks at paid inventory J, C, D, Z and P plus GS upgrade space PN and the rest of us upgrade space PZ and non-elite award space ZN to judge UA's present thinking on its chances of selling the space. The more you see "0" in the inventory classes, the poorer the chances for anyone to get upgrades

And finally to see the sold inventory and waitlist, you look at UA's Flight Status and change the date your device to the day befor the flight.

zoned_post_meridiem

I was in a similar, but slightly more preferable situation last year. Booked IAD - BRU in Premium Economy about 2-3 months ahead, waitlisted for upgrade after miles + copay, and cleared into Polaris a few weeks (!) before the flight.

My status with UA was low, but the PE seat obviously put me in a decent position.

nomad420

LOL this is still working! It will be funny to see how long this goes on for.

dantandaman

i did this for a trip to Europe at the time. The end result was I had to ask at the counter at check in time for it as no one had bothered to update my ticket! Fortunately when I asked at the gate, they figured it out and gave us biz seats.

RobOnLI

OP, there's hope. 13/48 isn't bad. But most business seats sell within a month or even two weeks of the flight. My guess is they may trickle out a seat here and there for upgrades between now and 2 weeks before your flight. Then they'll have a better idea of how many seats they can sell and how many should be upgraded. Also note you will see the upgrade list grow exponentially as April 1 gets closer.

Follow the trick above by changing the date on your phone and looking up the flight status. The good news is the flight will stay under "Flight Status | Recent" so you only have to change the date on your phone once, look up the flight and then it will stay there.

If you're seeing seats disappear from the seat map and the upgrade list hasn't changed then you know they are selling the seats. If people are dropping from the wait list and the booked/capacity numbers change then you know upgrades are processing.

At the end of the day, you are waitlisted and can't do anything about it unless you want to buy business class. This far out it won't help to change flights. Also, I think Wednesday is a great day for the upgrade. You have a good shot IMO.

My TPAC flight last week was booked 16/60 until T-36h when they popped 26 or so off the list and ran a big upgrade sweep. The list had 39 total. Ultimately everyone got upgraded including most of the non-revs who listed. No clue why it took them so long to upgrade anyone as the cabin was clearly not selling. It was Chinese New Years Day.

Happy traveling.

-RM