Upgrade List and Dark Matter ?
 

Just curious if someone know what this "dark matter" is:

SFO/NRT - booked on Eco, upgrade waitlisted for Polaris. Asked for position in waitlist, didn't seem to make the cut, so upgraded to PE during checkin 24 hours before plane leaves. See myself on place #1 in waitlist. See 7 open seats in Polaris. Checking repeatedly during the 24 hours, and ca. 1 hour before takeoff seats start to vanish. Ultimately i wait boarding as the last person and finally i get notification - seems like i got the last Polaris seat.

But so.. what could this dark matter be that fills up these seats so late, and without showing up in the upgrade list - is there some other place i could look at to diagnose where it comes from ? I wanted to ask at the gate but they where so horrible busy and i didn't want to be left at the airport alone after i finally got the upgrade and they where about to close the door ;-)

People taking buy up offers

If they are TOD upgrades offered during the check-in flow, these show up as "cleared" upgrades though, right? That's certainly been my experience.

I see a lot of this fluctuation in availability as well on most long-haul flights inside the last 24 hours before departure time. I've put it down to people on flexible tickets moving between flights, corporate travel agents protecting pax on flights without ticketing them, staff travel, etc. Very often the "booked" number will increase without any seat being selected.

Buy-up offers, SDCs, new tickets, some other flight canceled and it was rebooks... I think people vastly underestimate the amount of churn the typical flight has in its last 24 hours.

Sometimes, but definitely not always.

There's a great attractor in UA's upgrade list that retards elites in their quest for moving higher on the list...

Fundamentally you were fighting a few factors - others who purchased into PE who were moved into J before you as well as folks who may not have been assigned seats already in J as well as, depending on the offers, taken out a credit card and bought the upgrade.

If you want to confirm while at the gate, be patient and stand before the gate agents and present yourself to ascertain how likely you were to get the upgrade - irrespective of their busyness.

David

From Capacity - Booked on the app/website? Or just looking at the seat map?

Where would i even find these ? The only one i found was when checking in 24 hours in before - but i would not know where to find these after having checked it.

I primarily looked at the seat map, but i think the app booking status sections where consistent with the seat map.

Sorry, i can not parse this. Rephrase, please ?

I do understand the option for people to buy up - and this logically would not show up in the upgrade list. I already asked on another post what options there are to do this, as i am unaware.

I do not understand the other points you list when the do not involved paying up...

That too is of interest. Do you think it could actually make a difference (aka: does gate agent have an impact on the action taken, and me being assertive could trigger such action ?) or would just be for reconfirmation as you say ?

Another reason could be overbook on another xxx-NRT flight and they re-route people to SFO-NRT flight. I've had that happen to me, UA agent called me asking me to switch from an ex-SFO flight to ex-LAX flight around 2h before my originating flight.

People that had not selected a seat until check-in at the airport and yes this does happen.
People making cash purchased of the upgrade
People SDCing on to the flight
People whose flight plans have been disrupted by irrops
People making last minute ticket purchases


None of the above is unusual or rare and can happen on most flights.
All of the above are reasons UA does not process all the upgrades long before departure.
The seatmap is a poor indicator of the true status. Look (with expert mode) what the J inventory is. Or look just above the waitlist on united.com or app and what the sold seat counts are.

Indeed. I noted that the rear third of some UA flight looked almost empty a few days before the flight, and when i looked at checkin, it was completely full. Thats a different issue, but i did wonder what the best places would be to look for what seemingly must be good offers. E.g.: Should i be able to see them on united.com simply by looking for flights within the next 24 hours or so ?

Basic Economy does not generally get advance seat assignment.
As GA, was one offered at check-in? After Check-in you may or may not see the offered displayed if waitlisted.

Typically if you go into manage my reservation on the app, when you scroll down you may see towards the bottom "upgrade my cabin" and you can click to see what's on offer.

I upgraded my brother from SFO-TPE for $1599 last fall. PE to J and into the P inventory. He was on the MUA list and definitely wasn't going to make the cut. But it showed up on the upgrade list as if he cleared it. Curious if you knew what the upgrade cost was OP.

I've heard it has been as low as $600 from PE to J on the West Coast to Asia flights.

And the people who follow the upgrade list tend to be aware of this option, which is a very big part of why being #1 or 2 on the list with 2 seats available inside of T-24 means less than a 50% chance of actually clearing.

Ah, right - well thats certainly an easy explained largest amount of Dark Matter if all i can see is the seat map ;-)
But still not clear of descriptions of similar dark matter for the Polaris seat map.

GA ? I did not see any further offers after i check in, but i did do the buy-up during checkin.

Haha. Right. And its worse if colleagues from other companies even recognize your name on the upgrade list and ask you how you skipped them ;-)

Well, one of the whole points of the exercise is to figure out when/how its important to pay up to PE to get cleared for Polaris. Otherwise i wouldn't much care for paying for PE itself. Exit Row seat in economy is comparable to me (Mr Frugal ;-).

Ok. This is like particle physics. New particles discovered every day ;-)

But thanks a lot - makes a lot of sense. I just read up a bit on SDC and it seems as if there could be folks changing over from the ca. 40? minutes earlier flight to HND where the prices where already higher, so moving to NRT might have given them Polaris without a price hike.

I've never tried to upgrade solely with money into Polaris. That would be interesting to know how well that works. I always used Miles+Money so far. In this case it did add up quite a bit.
I think it was $400 plsu 20k mile ? For the Polaris upgrade and then $575 for the checkin updade to PE. But they did sell on the web page Polaris at the end for $17k if i remember corretly. Mid-Week. Maybetime to buy United Stock instead of tickets. On second thought: No ;-)