Lux Flyer

MUA requires PZ space to be available. A MUA is when you use miles to upgrade a paid ticket.

An award ticket is when you use miles to pay for the entire ticket and is when the JN (and YN/XN/IN) inventory becomes relevant.

Yes needs PZ, so it waitlists until PZ becomes available (and you're next on the list). The JN means you could book an award ticket (entirely with miles). It will be a lot of miles (you can do a new booking search to see how many).

1. No
2. No, not on separate PNRs
3. Lowish, you're behind all elites who are booked into premium plus requesting upgrades with PlusPoints and/or MUA's. On the plus side, you're ahead of any non-GS elites in economy.
4. Plan to fly in premium plus, especially this route. Getting an A/R fare isn't bad. You can still apply the MUA, if it doesn't clear you will get the miles back.
5. 3rd level tie breaker (after elite status and booking code) if it's a United Club Infinite (or presidential club card...no longer offered). Zero impact if it's not one of those cards.

jsloan

PZ.

Yes, that's exactly why.

1. There's generally no way to guarantee it. Watch for PZ2 (or more); then the upgrades would clear instantly.
2. Not great, but nonzero given that you bought Premium Plus.
3. If you'd turn the upgrade if you couldn't both clear, then probably.should do as you say.
4. Not in any meaningful way.

WineCountryUA

To upgrade paid PremPlus to Polaris, you will need PZ -- honestly for a non-elite that will be a tought upgrade even from PremPlus for EWR-TLV

JN is an expensive mileage award for Polaris, hence there is alot of inventory. The more equivalent award space if I/IN


No, once purchased you can not combine PNR plus everyone on a common PNR must have the same fare class.
On separate PNR, essentially none. If not upgraded before the airport, you can speaking to the GA and ask for all or none but otherwise the reservations will be treated independent
poor
not impossible but if traveling on peakday Friday thru Monday, chances are very poor. Other days just poor
A little, not much -- Status, purchased fare class are the main factors

LGinPA

Thanks for the answers. A new booking with miles on this leg did show the JN code and it needed 355k miles!

Thanks for your quick and helpful replies! Maybe I'll delve into expert flyer to watch for PZ to come available.

jsloan

Unfortunately, ExpertFlyer doesn't have access to PZ inventory. You have to check Expert Mode on UA directly, and there's no way to set an alert for it.

LGinPA

Thank you very much for your help. (I do need to learn how to use the multi-quote feature here. )

The strange thing about this outbound flight is at 6 months out, when I booked our tix, the no frills economy seats were totally full, and this is a 787-10, so it's huge. I'm not sure what that can mean for upgrading.

I forgot to ask this. Can I reject an MUA if one of us gets it and the other doesn't?

Darn. OK, so I may still check it out.

jsloan

Are you including the so-called “preferred” seats as having “frills?” They don’t — it’s just UA’s way to try to get people to pay for seat assignments.

All things being considered, you’d prefer a lighter load for upgrade chances. However, as Premium Plus passengers, you’d be ahead of anyone in economy who’s not using an upgrade instrument from a Global Services (top tier, invitation-only) account, so I don’t think it’d be a huge red flag on its own.

As for turning down an upgrade — I wouldn’t advise trying to do it from Premium Plus. It’s extremely unlikely you’d have inventory to change back into ahead of time; and if you try to do it at the gate, there’s still no guarantee of success. At a minimum, you’re going to create a big hassle for a gate agent to try to sort out, and you may simply be told no. (The chances of ending up seated next to each other also drop to approximately nil).

2ptraveler

Is this three different ways to say the same basic thing?

Does a UA Club Card (infinite) holder carry any extra weight in a "tie breaker" on the off chance it comes to that?

On that subject, is it only basic status, or does YTD PQF/PQP factor as "status?"

SPN Lifer

The latter receive no consideration as "status".

fumje

Yes / yes, theoretically it does, but the posts are emphasising how "off" that off chance is in practice.

No, YTD PQF/PQP doesn't affect ranking.

WineCountryUA

yes

yes, but as stated earlier not much -- just as a tiebreak if all the higher factors are tied

No

Kacee

On that route, the waitlist for business will probably come down to which 1K(s) has/have the higher PE fare class.

jsloan

Yes. Most ties are resolved well before you get to holding a Club card.

Furthermore, in order for it to matter, this is what has to happen:

There must be enough seats to clear everyone on a Global Services upgrade instrument, in any class.
AND there must be enough seats to clear everyone in Premium Plus, not on a GS upgrade instrument, with any UA status
AND there must be enough seats to clear everyone in Premium Plus, not on a GS upgrade instrument, with no status, and an O or A fare,
BUT there must not be enough seats to clear everyone in Premium Plus, not on a GS upgrade instrument, with an R fare,
AND there must be enough seats left over, to allocate only among non-status passengers on an R fare, such that you would clear if you were a cardholder but would not clear if you were not.

I won't keep going through the criteria -- there are too many ORs -- but in general they can either clear almost nobody or almost everybody. I suspect, across all of UA's network, for instrument upgrades, the Club Card tiebreaker probably makes a meaningful difference, for non-status passengers, maybe once a month. The value, such as it is, would be on Premier-heavy routes; if you fly SFO-EWR frequently, where almost nobody clears, and you're a GS on a route where GSes are a dime a dozen, then it might make sense because you might leap ahead of several other passengers at your same status and fare level. As non-status passengers, though, it wouldn't surprise me if you were the only two Premium Plus non-status upgrade requests in the system.

Lux Flyer

Others have answered already. but in my opinion it's importance goes down as you have lower (or no level status). My gut feeling is the lower your status the less likely you're going to run into someone also at your status level and fare class also trying to upgrade where the tiebreaker would be meaningful (and that assumes there was no one with a higher status who didn't snatch the upgrade away already). As a GS/1K there is a decent chance it could break a tie in a meaningful way (certainly more so then the time of upgrade request that some people like to worry about ). And there are of course other reasons for having the card when you're flying that frequently (annual United club membership included in the annual fee, travel insurance benefit, additional savings on award tickets, etc).

Kacee

I suspect it's most likely to make a difference between 1Ks on a hub to hub where UA sells a bunch of the same fare class (e.g, an S, V, or Q) due to AP restrictions.