jsloan

You're still making a false comparison.

I don't have that option. If UA would show that, and the price was giving up the cleared list, I'd probably take it. However, saying "it's OK that they took away feature A, because feature B would be better anyway," isn't useful when feature B doesn't exist. It's akin to saying, "who cares if you never get a CPU? Wouldn't it be better if UA had an all lie-flat cabin in coach anyway?"

tarheelnj

I wonder if UA has done away with the "jump the queue" capability. You're waitlisted with a GPU on an international flight and you're number 4 on the list on a full flight. You keep refreshing the seat chart before boarding and you see a seat open up. You could then just call the 1k line and have them assign you the seat with your GPU right then. (Not admitting I've done this, of course.) That shouldn't be possible, but it was at least a couple years ago, when I last "saw" that process work.

jsloan

There's another thread on this. R space still occasionally opens without pending upgrades being processed.

ETA: I suppose only time will tell if that has stopped as of the rollout of this change.

fumje

It seems dubious that this change is related to the R opening / upgrades clearing issue, but indeed time will tell.

edit add:

I think this is a fun learning opportunity. I had no idea there was an airport at Kota Kinabalu. Now I want to go. It's like a challenge.

chrisl137

The AS list acts a little different from the UA list - I've been switching and haven't quite sorted out all the behaviors yet. It seems to remove people from the list once they're upgraded and checked in (or something like that). I've had several upgrades since I've been flying as an AS MVP and I don't think I've ever showed on the list after the upgrade. I was on a VX flight where the guy sitting next to me in MCS/premium had been upgraded and didn't know it, so when someone else came and claimed the same seat and the FA called the first one to take his stuff and bring it to the front we were able to see from the app that he'd been upgraded and not offloaded.

joe_miami

Right, but United doesn't offer SDC out of the goodness of its heart. United offers SDC because it banks on more people wanting to leave sooner rather than later, which gives United more time to sell seats. The more people try to leave later in order to score free upgrades, the more United loses in terms of revenue and the more United is inviting problems upon itself. (If a person SDCs at T-1 to score an upgrade and then the later flight goes IRROPS, United could lose money in all sorts of ways.)

Maybe, maybe not. This seems like a situation where no carrier wants to be the first mover when it comes to eliminating free upgrades, but that's probably mostly for p.r. reasons. For all of the complaining in these airline forums, only a small percentage of people are jumping from one airline to another. The average road warrior doesn't have much of a choice when it comes to airlines.

Regardless, even at 80% monetization, upgrades would all but disappear for just about anyone under the top level or two of status.

Why would anyone buy a $1,500 Y ticket when they could buy an F ticket for $300? Anyone still doing this is throwing money away. Such a person could literally throw away three such F tickets per trip and still come out ahead.

Regardless, if there are still people out there buying tickets like this, the airlines can easily accommodate them in a no-CPU system by redefining the fare class. In a system that values revenue over all else, it makes no sense that a person who paid $1,500 could be sitting in E or E+ while someone who scored a cheap P fare is up front. (If there are 200+ pax on a flight and a person paid the highest fare, is it really an "upgrade" to be in one of the F or J seats? I'd argue that it isn't.)

Two Bee

I am so excited about my, soon to be, NEW learning experience. Not knowing what crap I was going to get to choose for my dinner for the past year, and and kept in the dark the entire time, without even ONE leak about what was happening in the kitchen, puts our government to shame. Now, not having the foggiest idea, or clue, where I might be sitting until the door shuts is simply sooooooooooooooooooo considerate & way too generous!

No biggie, I can still purchase wifi on board to read the paper, after the double chime!

Seriously, do these people stay up all night thinking up ways to pi$$ off their TOP ELITES???

Kacee

They have within the past year or two implemented a rule that agents are not supposed to clear instruments within (approximately) two hours of departure. That is intended to prevent queue jumping. They previously limited the ability to queue jump by making it impossible to apply an instrument online inside of T-24.

But they have not addressed the fundamental problem (see below).

They will not be able to fix the system problem without a major upgrade to SHARES (or adoption of a new reservation system). The fundamental problem is that lists don't process dynamically in SHARES.

If anything, we have witnessed a substantial uptick in waitlist problems over the past month or so (both failure of upgrade requests and failure of the list to process after R opens). We seem to be moving back to where we were five years ago, right after the merger, when babysitting your waitlisted upgrade was absolutely mandatory.

Air Houston

Kacee

My last two waitlisted instruments, applied online, have not applied correctly. The first did not clear when the flight went R2, and I had to call. Which turned into something of an ordeal. The second waitlisted flight is still R0, but based on this recent experience, as well as reports in this forum, I believe there's a good chance I'll have to call on that one, too (assuming it goes R positive).

I follow the forum pretty closely, and there has been a notable uptick in reported problems both on the waitlisting end and the clearing end.

fezzington

I just got bit by this when pass riding. I made plans not knowing the new format, and ended up sitting in E-, when I could've been in the front cabin had I taken another routing.

Not a happy camper at this unannounced change.

LAXOGG

At T-120 upgrade went through. Received email notification. Booked FC went from 7 to 8. My name is not on the upgrade list. My GS wife on a separate reservation did not get upgraded. Come on.....holding back 50% of 16 seat FC.

jsloan

Kacee

Exactly. I don't think UA realizes how off-putting it is to buy an expensive refundable fare and watch the F cabin fill with purchases of P fares that cost considerably less.

joe_miami

jsloan — You obviously know far more about this topic than I do. I just know that, as a business owner, I don't make changes just for the sake of making changes, and when I do make changes, it's because I believe they'll cut costs and/or increase revenue. Assuming these changes by United weren't unintended, it seems like there's a cost/revenue motive somewhere.

I agree that United isn't losing money from SDC, but as with anything, the longer something exists, the more people find a way to exploit it. If United is trying to be less transparent with SDC and/or upgrades, perhaps they're responding to some trend they've noticed. All else aside, I assume you agree United has a better chance of selling a seat and/or upgrade at T-6 or T-3 than at T-1.