johnden

Better question, why should UA care who is upgraded? Those R seats will be freebies anyway. In fact, if more miles+copay flyers are jumping the queue than GPU flyers, queue jumping is revenue positive for UA.

The general lack of transparency in the current system is a bit frustrating. Although drawing firm conclusions is hard, I think it was worse with sUA. I knew a non-rev employee that would always score business/gf seats on full flights out of a certain station. I worked with a 2P that chatted up gate agents and scored lots of upgrades while I rode in back as a 1K in the early days of UDU. During IRROPs I could get booked into F by being friendly at a certain united club location. Being buddies with the right employees would get you saver seats opened up when none were available. I've heard lots of similar stories, some good, some bad.

eflyte

No, just pointed out that the space was available and asked if they could manually processes the UG

PV_Premier

i have limited experience (less than three years) as a premier exec on pmUA. let me tell you what happened in that experience:
1. i bought tickets
2. i got put on a waitlist (for cpu or instrument upgrade)
3. i got upgraded more often than not and i didn't worry about the status of any stupid fare bucket at any point before my flight

i'm sure there were shenanigans, but i trusted the process because it generally worked as advertised.

now, the process advertised to be the same, but in reality it is:
1. i hunt mercilessly for R across an outrageous number of connecting options, dates, flights, etc
2. i rarely if ever find R>0
3. i buy tickets, sometimes they issue correctly
4. i get put on a waitlist
5. i monitor R. this used to be easy with EF. now it's a nightmare.
6. more often than not, R>0 with me on the waitlist
7. i call UA and sit on hold or fight with an agent to get the upgrade cleared
8. frequently, i HUACA, sometimes multiple times

johnden

I think my point wasn't clear.

I see the same upgrade chances now as I did under sUA. I buy W/V fares outside of peak business travel. I apply a GPU/Systemwide/miles in advance. 90% clear, same as always.

The new UA has some tricks to bring that to 100% if you have flexible dates (thank you lingering R inventory). It also allows you to jump the queue if you want to, you are not being forced to monitor inventory.

Jeffy took away the discretion agents had for upgrades and replaced it with TODs/revenue tricks. I think it balances out. Those seats sold for TODs or swiped by silvers queue jumping are the same seats that sUA agents used to give away to make people happy.

The only difference is that R doesn't always mean what it used to. Clearly they are using it for sales calculations. Most of the time upgrades happen automatically, just like sUA. Pretend it's before .bomb had expert mode and you can't see NC. I played the upgrade lottery and won big (relative to the cost if buying z/d). I'm still winning.

channa

Not exactly. First, PMUA didn't really open up too much upgrade inventory to help out -- that was a rare occurrence. That, and UA would only do that if there was no waitlist, so people weren't undercutting the queue with it.


Not quote. R is supposed to let you clear into it. The waitlisting doesn't work right. It's not that it doesn't mean what it used to, rather it doesn't work.


I think it's an unintended consequence of their crappy technology. Having it out there is not their intent.


So how long ago would that be? Early 1990s?


Sure, but there's just more obstacles and headaches in the process, just like with most things CO.

johnden

I don't want to beat this to death, it's clearly broken and people are clearing queue jumping.

My speculation as to why this is intended assumes that R does not mean "free" upgrades are available close in. Something like this:

1) An inventory management task runs and allocates open premium seats into R, I and PN based on probability of selling them.

2) Close in, another task runs to discount upgrades, and bases its algorithm on the freebies available (R, I, PN, etc).

3) United wants to sell, even for a discount, the last few upgrades close to departure. They don't want to do this in advance for fear of pissing off elites (upgrade percentages dropping) or opportunity costs of selling the seats.

4) Close in, management doesn't want you to queue jump if they are trying to sell the seats, but agents recognize it is unpreventable. Management would rather sell the discounted upgrades.

So basically in this scenario the "fix" is to prevent queue jumping and auto-clearing upgrades within the window where they may be discounting upgrades (maybe T-72). The "fix" may not be to restore "R" to the old meaning. Be careful what you wish for. Right now we can snipe the R inventory close in. United may close that window, then those last seats will all go to TODs.

channa

The flaw in this theory is that a new upgrader can upgrade themselves into R, bypassing whatever waitlist exists.

If the intent were to sell upgrades, they would keep R at zero, and sell upgrades for cash out of some other bucket.

Note that this also happens many months out as well, not just in the last few days before departure.

I do think that they may like the outcome of the bug, and not respect the time/effort/frustration that Elite members experience. All of which may decrease CO's motivation to fix it.

Kacee

Yes. And much as we bash UA, R is not limited solely to seats that UA believes will go unsold; there is some factor in the algorithm for R releases solely as an elite benefit.

For all the complaining here, the waitlist issues have much reduced over the past year. It has become fairly irregular for waitlists not to clear automatically prior to T-24. The T-24 bug still persists but that is something that I personally have benefitted from quite a few times and would be bummed to see it 100% fixed.

nova08

So my 2 EWR-LHR GPUs cleared 3 days before departure, so I have to put a little more faith in the process. Until this morning when I hit T-24 of the first segment of my flight home and my wait listed GPUs on IAH-PHL disappeared because they had not yet cleared.

cfischer

recently LHR-IAH cleared for me as well without ever seeing any R-class. They cleared both of us and the flight is still R0. This is how it is supposed to work. Hope this is a good start to UA permanently fix the problem process.

exerda

I'd be curious, though, if you had checked inventory an hour or two before it cleared what you might have seen.

cfischer

I checked the same morning and it was R0; some time in the afternoon I got the 'waitlist cleared' Email.

HeadInTheClouds

I would add, who is complaining about it (especially the T-24 part)? If you know it exists, you know how to manipulate it very effectively in your favor, so why complain? If you don't know this situation exists, you aren't complaining about it, specifically at least.

UA-NYC

Because it goes the other way too:

1. R space gives rise to TODs and the like
2. A last minute booker can come in and grab the R space you might have been waitlisted months for

T-24 appears to have also gone away too, at least w/PS

cyclogenesis

Because it is a stupid stressful situation.. I want my GPU/Miles upgrade to waitlist and clear normally without having to monitor for R space and snipe to get an unfair advantage..