I have a 3-person adult reservation - IAH-CUN-IAH for November. I am Plat- my wife- silver - the third person - member. My wife will be 24 PQP's short of Silver for qualification unless I move her into first class for this flight. As of right now, United is showing me $276 per to move into first (F has 20 seats open). We have a friend (single booking) going on the same plane, and United is showing $164 to upgrade that person. What are your ideas on splitting the reservation? Plat/Member -1 confirmation; wife -1 or 3 single confirmations? I am trying to maximize the ability to capture an upgrade to first class for free (myself/+ member). I am also trying to think about the return and getting 1 or 2 seats upgraded there due to my status and number open on 777. TIA!

Just to clarify, are you talking about instrument supported upgrades or CPU? I will assume the latter since Plat don't get many PP. And you want to pay to upgrade your wife because she needs the PQP and wants to keep Silver? That means she will have to be on a separate record, so splitting her out is a must. That leaves you two options...keep you and your other friend together, or split.

Remember that when you get to 24 hours, you will need to split your record to remain on the upgrade list anyway and then tell the check-in agent that your friend is your companion to hopefully get them your status in the upgrade list. So, my suggestion would probably be to keep you both together in the hopes of an upgrade at the PLT window which is admittedly rare these days but maybe if there are tons of seats. And then split when you get to 24 hours and try to add them as your companion (and do the same on the return at check-in)

I'm not sure why the upgrade price for the friend on a separate record is relevant to the rest. It likely costs your wife more to upgrade based on the current fare class she is booked into, so leave that to the side.

OP, if the only reason you are comtemplating the upgrade is PQP spend, you might want to check if this flight offers award accelerator. Might get those missing PQP cheaper.
Separately, United Explorer card comes with almost all Silver perks, so may be not even worth chasing the status.

thanks- was referencing a CPU in this case. Fingers crossed. But yes, the wife flies sometimes without me and doesn�t have a CC so the free checked bags are nice. We share a PP CC, very old school and she doesn�t fly enough to have her own CC, though she wants one!

I didn�t know the �day of departure� or upsale/upgrade into F was dependent on the class of your booked fare. Thought is was random or tied to unsold volume. That is why I referenced the cost.

The friend is in K and the three of us are in G buckets. So even splitting my wife out, will still result in an upgrade cost of $276. Interesting! Cue the more you know slogan� lol- thanks!

I looked into it, was $700 for 500 pqp and like 2k miles or something along those lines for miles. Basically worthless offer for me.



Under normal consideration, I would make her fly to dfw and back but she said she is done for the year and didn�t want to spend a weekend day flying to nowhere.

But missing the most valuable -- E+ access (and companion) at checkin. The credit card does have free check bag as does SIlver.

To me, the most valuable benefit of MileagePlus� Premier Silver membership is the minimum of 500 miles per segment toward Million Miler status, a benefit not offered by any credit card.

To get 24 PQP, how about an E+ purchase?

That's why I said 'most'. Value is in the eyes of the beholder, indeed - with my routes and schedules, there are usually no available e+ seats during checkin, but for someone else it could certainly be valuable.

I daresay, this would not be something general public would care deeply about.

That would do the trick but since she is tagged to my reservation - we are already in E+. I would venture to say even splitting her out now would not result in a 'demotion' back to regular E class.

A split and then changing her seat to another E+ seat likely would trigger a charge.

As to OP, you're not going to be able to get free upgrades for both companions anyway. So if you want that you're going to need to split.

If you split wife off, buy up to first, and she's silver by that point (though maybe she needs the return PQP as well), at least she'll be on upgrade list on return. Meanwhile you and companion can both be on upgrade list as plat in both directions. You'll have to deal with relationships, but if you manage two upgrades on return and your spouse is stuck in coach, you can figure out among you who actually sits in the F seat.

Or, if you can, rebook as two one-ways so that you can split differently on the return - i.e. split wife off on way there and companion off on return.

Indeed . . . unless you live where you regularly fly <500m flights to a hub it's almost irrelevant. and even then it barely makes a dent in your MM accumulation.

It should be noted that SPNLifer spent much of his traveling career 129 miles from the nearest UA hub.

As an AUS-based traveler, I have logged 198 AUS-IAH or IAH-AUS segments on flightmemory.com, and I bet I've missed dozens from before I started using the site. As AUS-IAH is 140 miles, that's 71K extra lifetime miles out of my 1.4MM total -- about 5%.