Normal to keep 50% of F open at less than T-48?
 

I’m booked in Y on the mid-morning SFO-DTW flight this Monday. F is 20 seats, only 10 of which are booked according to the mobile flight status page.

The cabin was the same at around T-90 when I first checked, so I expected my CPU to clear right at the T-72 window. Not only did it not then, but it still hasn’t, and nobody else has cleared into F either.

Is it normal for UA to hold so many open F seats on a midcon without clearing? Is there any reason why they would do so on this fight in particular, like maybe a possible equipment swap? The flight is currently on a 737-9 with a mostly-full Y cabin. They are selling F upgrades.

In a word, YES

UA will try hard to sell the seats at discounted cash upgrade prices

Yes,

Not necessarily.

That is one of the reasons that they will keep the F seats open.

UA has increasingly been delaying upgrades further and further toward the gate. With the recent lack of transparency, there's no good way to know if anybody's been upgraded already besides watching the seat map -- but, even then, all you can determine is a negative. If a seat gets taken, there's no way to know if it was UA running an upgrade for a GS or 1K that was already on the list ahead of you, or if it was somebody buying a ticket.

Even before some of the ridiculous "no upgrades at T-24 with 13 open", there was a strong pattern of clearing the 1Ks at T-96 and then waiting a while before running another sweep.

Yes.
No. The upgrade list should always be cleared prior to departure.

I was on a E175 flight that was 1/12 F sold and I wasn't upgraded until T-24. Then aircraft was subbed to a E170 and ended up departing 4/6 in F.

I will say it makes irrops handling better too. I'm flying IAH-CLE today... My oringinal flight boarded and then deplaned when they figured out we didn't have a captain or FO to fly the plane (they, as it turns out, were in Austin)... About 90 minutes later we reboarded... Door closed, sat for an hour, and then deplaned again because our FAs and Pilots timed out (and the FAs were loudly complaining about being willing to work if Crew scheduling a would pay them "their $350").

I was sure getting protected in the class I paid for was going to be a battle and had actually planned on finding a hotel and going out in the morning... But a supervisor put me on the next flight out, confirmed in F, and probably 1/2 of my flights F cabin was also reaccomed including a family of 3. (Y was "middle seats only" last I heard...no way I'm ever trading paid F for a middle Y, ever. I'll force a refund and book another carrier if that's what it takes)

If the old practice of clearing CPUs to one open seat had been followed on this flight I might have gotten lucky but no way the family would have made it, etc.

The practice is to clear down to 2.

But it's increasingly common for UA not to sweep at all until T-24.

Situations like this are exactly why I stopped flying United two years ago: their inability to staff flights with crews. I can't believe they are still struggling in this regard. I understand weather happens, of course. But still... happened so many times to me, in a row, that I finally mutters some words under my breath and moved to a more reliable operator. ESPECIALLY aggravating is that these situations happen at HUGE HUBS... you'd think that UA/Express could find pilots at SFO (in my case) or IAH (in yours).

Back on topic, yeah they have to hold the seats open so that they can sell them for $30 to Ma and Pa with no premier status.
Elites aren't eligible, because they get the seats for free, once UA feels like it. Which means... you're hosed.
And, honestly, I can't blame this entirely on UA... CO had started such shenanigans just before the merger. Apparently the revenue is worth the irritation caused to the premiers.

You may be using old data -- AA is at the bottom of the legacy carrier heap nowadays-- UA is midway between DL and AA (and AS, listed as one of your carriers, avoiding the bad airports, is about the same as DL. Overall the spread as gotten smaller. Things change.

That is really old data --- that sort of event is long gone, status disadvantage is long gone and those sort of prices are long gone. Yes, UA works hard to sell seats first, but it has gotten has done "better" in extracting more revenue (typically $50/flight hour for it cash upgrades - domestically)

Consider it's showing J9, that means there are at least 9 seats that UA is willing to sell, or 9 seats available. Note that 9 is the highest number that expert mode shows, so an entirely empty cabin would still show J9.