EleanorMcDaniel

New UA gold here.... question about upgrades.

I have a GVA-IAD flight coming up in a few days, I booked Premium Economy.

Website on my computer says upgrade to business is $4,456. App on my phone says upgrade to business is $1,988

Now I am not spending even $1988 on a lie flat seat for a 9 hour daytime flight. That having been said, it doesn't give me the option of upgrading with miles, curious if United does that. Also, why are the prices different on the two different sites?

Finally, do these upgrade prices go down as we get closer to checkin or departure? Am I best to wait till a couple hours before departure to checkin, hoping the price will drop? Do they ever op-up ? And do I even have a chance as a lowly gold?

findark

A number of questions buried in here:

I don't know why the price is different in the app versus the website; it's probably different code generating the offer. The price is not indicative of the actual difference in fare, just an upsell opportunity at the moment. It might go down, or it might not. The offer at check-in is often less than the figures you quote, but it might not be. It depends on whether the J cabin gets sold or not.

Yes, you can upgrade with miles. The cost should be available under the upgrade tab on the website. Unless you are confirmed in O class, then there will usually be a cash "co-pay" to go with the miles. Mileage upgrade requests are not confirmed (generally) unless there is space in PZ class, which is quite rare. Your miles and cash will be returned if the upgrade does not clear.

United, like any other carrier, will run operational upgrades as necessary. Yes, it happens. But, as is always the case, it depends on lower cabins being oversold after all supported upgrades are cleared, and is done only for UA's own operational convenience.

jsloan

Yes, you can upgrade with miles plus a refundable copay. The upgrade is likely to be waitlisted -- if you give your travel date, we can judge the odds. Not sure why the prices are different; perhaps one is a true re-pricing of the fare into Polaris and the other is a sticker-type upgrade that doesn't actually re-price it (it makes a difference if you make a voluntary change).

The upgrade prices may go up or down, depending upon inventory. If you don't like the deal now, keep watching and see if they improve it.

Yes, they will op-up, but only (a) after clearing upgrades and (b) if there is an oversold cabin that requires it. If the PE cabin is severely oversold, you might have a chance as a Gold, but it's definitely not something to bank on.

james7

Hi all, still new to crediting miles to United. Say I have a ticket from SIN-SFO-LAX-SFO-SIN, how will my miles (not PQM/PDQ) will I earn per segment?

Let's hypothetically say my base fare + carrier surcharges was $1000 and I have no status with United and will earn 5000 miles in total. Will it be split evenly per flight segment (i.e. 1250 per segment)? Or is it distributed based on the proportion of journey traveled (i.e. SIN-SFO flight will be credited more miles than SFO-LAX flight)?

WineCountryUA

Earnings will post after each completed segment and will be based on a computed fare component for each segment. Award miles / RDMs will be based on the fare (PQPs) for the segment times a status multiple (x5 for general members).
You will be able to see an estimate in booking process and post booking in the online reservation. It is not equally split. How it is split dependents on the fare construction details, fare classes, .....

jsloan

There's no hard-and-fast rule, but in general, it appears to be proportional to distance in most cases. I'd expect the SIN-SFO and SFO-SIN flights to earn the lion's share of the credit.

findark

First, each fare component stands alone in terms of value. For a simple SIN-LAX round-trip, there are probably two fare components: SIN-LAX, and SIN-LAX (applying to LAX-SIN). If the fares were the same, that would be $500 each way, but this could easily be something like $700 on the outbound and $300 on the return. A detailed fare construction will show this, although YQ/YR is somewhat opaque.

When multiple segments are on a single fare (such as SIN-SFO-LAX), the division is usually close to ratably by distance, but often not exact and it is at the whim of the UA computer. It will be the same division as PQP and ratable refunds of unflown fare components for an involuntary (non-repricing) cancel.

SFOrunner

I am using United.com to search for award travel to Europe and I encountered a situation where a fare is not available to book as a non-stop, but the route is available as a stopover. Specifically:

8/31/22 SFO-FRA-GVA
LH 455 SFO-FRA
LH 1228 FRA-GVA
80.5K miles + $37.80
I Fare (Business)

If I try to book just SFO-FRA, and take the same LH 455 flight, there are no business class awards available. Can someone explain the logic from UA / LH's perspective?

jsloan

People value non-stop flights, so LH is less anxious to give them away cheaply. That's the entirety of it -- if someone's searching for SFO-GVA, they know passengers are going to have to connect with any carrier, so they lower prices to compete. For SFO-FRA, there's no nonstop competition outside of the JV, so prices are higher. And since there isn't -- yet -- a way to have dynamic award pricing on partner flights, LH just declines to offer you that seat instead of trying to sell it for 300K miles.

Two prices for the same physical seat, because pricing is based upon transportation between the two endpoints -- and it's no different than buying a cash ticket, which may well be much cheaper for SFO-(FRA)-GVA than for SFO-FRA on its own.

BTW: In this particular case, it's entirely an LH decision. All UA is doing is abiding by the married segment rules that LH has set for their awards.

everywhere

Thank you.

On an 016-stock ticket operated by UA, how does the earning work when your status changes mid-trip? It looks like they pro-rata based on distance or fare component, so I assume each segment is calculated based on your status at the time the flight was flown (is it like AA and the qualifying flight for that level of status does not receive any elite bonus)?

Lux Flyer

Ok correction: when there are multiple flights on a fare component. The base fare allocation is based on the mile flown for a specific flight compared to the total miles of the fare component. What that means. Say you are on a $500 fare from SFO to ORD, and you have a connection in DEN.
SFO-DEN is 967 miles
DEN-ORD is 888 miles
Total miles is 1855. SFO-DEN makes up 52.13% of the miles flown on the fare, DEN-ORD makes up 47.87% of the miles flown on the fare. That means 52.13% of the base fare is allocated to SFO-DEN so 260.65 (261) for that flight and 47.87% allocated to DEN-ORD so $239.

The thing I don't know is if these are waiting to credit until you get all the way to ORD/requires completed travel on the fare component (and these are just the allocations when it does credit), or if it will credit at the connection point (I'll admit I don't usually check on connections to see if that specific flight has shown up or not)

With regards to the status: earnings are based on status when you fly. I know it used to be you have to wait until next day until status took effect, however I have noticed my flights crediting faster lately (same day) and don't know if that also applies to status (ie do you get status change as soon as a flight credits to put you over threshold, or does it still wait until next day even if that flight credited on the same day).

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe their system is setup to credit the flights anytime you have completed travel on a specific fare component within the overall itinerary, since the base fare allocated to a fare component is where the dollar spent comes from.

Ie.
If your fare is constructed with a fare break
ORD UA DEN 500.00 W##### UA SFO 200 K#####. You would get credit after flying ORD -> DEN for $500 and 1PQF and after flying DEN ->SFO for $200 and 1PQF.

If it was constructed with a connection
ORD UA X/DEN UA SFO Q##### 600.00. You would receive the credit after getting to SFO for $600 and 2PQF

Edit: Since it looks like you updated your post while I was mid response. I believe the earnings are based on your status when you initially started travel on the fare component. Your status updates the day following the day you took the flights which achieved a higher status level. So in my examples above.
First example: if you were silver when you left ORD, you would earn based on your silver status for the ORD DEN segment. If this was enough to make you Gold. If you are flying DEN SFO the same day you would earn based on your silver status still (since Gold hasn't taken effect yet). If DEN SFO is the next day or later that flight would earn based on gold status.

Second example: you would earn based on silver since the flight wouldn't post to make you gold until you got to SFO.

Edit 2: double checking a couple things on this because now that I look at it it looks like its still dividing up some connecting flights but need to double check how fare was actually constructed for those ones

jsloan

While this is usually true, I'm not convinced it's always true. It's definitely not true after you make a change, as the original values appear to apply to the coupons regardless of what you cities you end up flying between. (e.g., change AUS-IAH-DTW -> AUS-ORD-DTW, the AUS-ORD will earn a pittance and ORD-DTW will earn the majority).

They'll credit at the connection point.

The most recent reports that I've seen suggest that it still takes a day or two for status changes to be processed.

everywhere

Thank you. I take it the flight that qualifies for the next tier of status credits at the earn rate of the previous status?

I have this vague memory under the previous system of being surprised by earning more points on the flight that qualified me for some Premier status, but that was so long ago (and obviously this is a completely new system).

jsloan

Yes.

ajgarett

Mainly because the United mobile app was pitching a fit about missing information whenever I opened that flight (been watching seats). It seems that using the website directly to clear out the rogue service animal request & properly set my other details has satisfied the app for now. I'm still going to get paper boarding passes at the airport just in case.

I appreciate the warning about messing with the ticket.