scotomata

I have a flight to London next week and another flight to Osaka next month and I see a lot of Polaris seat availability. Can I possibly pay by miles and or cash at the airport for a Polaris class upgrade at a less expensive rate than what I am being offered now?

fumje

You can apply for a mileage upgrade award. Note that seeing a lot of seat availability a month before the flight is not a strong signal that you can clear the upgrade. A week before is more encouraging, but not guaranteed still.

jsloan

Miles.+ co-pay awards are fixed in price based upon route and your fare class. They do not change.

Cash-only buy-ups can change price at any time, up or down.

eightblack

Also the seat map is not entirely accurate as there are people who will not have selected a seat yet (hard for us FT'ers to imagine!) I always call UA and ask how many actual seats are left for purchase on the flight I am on and where I sit on the upgrade list and have never been not given the info - even if its more than 2 days out...

escapefromphl

If you go to reservation on the app, select the reservation then select manage reservation then scroll down, there is an upgrade cabin option. There will be a cash and a miles + cash option. The miles + cash option does not vary, and is likely your best bet unless you have access to plus points of course

vicontt

London is generally quite available, so I wouldn't be surprised if you see reasonably priced cash upgrade during the checkin. No idea about Osaka.

angetenar

SFO-KIX is a good route for upgrades, with PZ and I > 0 on many days.

drewguy

So to clarify - miles/miles+points get an upgrade only if there is space after paying customers, and then are allocated based on your status with United. Both London and Osaka tend to have a lot of upgrade space so there’s a chance your upgrade would “clear” even without status with United.

If you want to guarantee an upgrade generally paying the price United is asking is your only choice. The price offered is dynamic, so may go up or down before departure.

glamgrlinternational777

Partially true. If there is award availability (you can look in advanced search) the upgrade may clear immediately. I don't have status and had a Polaris upgrade where I was on the waitlist for a week and then I cleared, the flight was over a month out. So it wasn't after they tried to "sell" the seats. It seems to be somewhat random when they open up seats for upgrades, but booking a non elite heavy route on a plane with a large and empty polaris section will increase your chances that they may open up seats earlier, in my experience. They seem to have a set number of award seats to begin with, then depending on the route, aircraft, how far out the flight is, and how many seats are currently open, they may open up a few more seats earlier if they think they can't sell them.

But yes, an initial purchase or upgrade with cash is the only guarantee. Or booking an award flight in miles to begin with because it will only let you book on flights with award availability. I think milage award flight and upgrade award availability are different? If you want biz/first and the fare/cash upgrade is reasonable to you, its always better to just buy it and not play the upgrade game.

jsloan

Well, if there is upgrade availability, it will clear immediately. That's PZ space in Expert Mode. drewguy was simplifying.

This part is, more-or-less, true. However, your experience was somewhat unusual. It's quite common for UA not to release upgrade space in advance, in the hopes that they will be able to sell the seats.

And this part is somewhat less true. There is no "set number of award seats to begin with," except if you'd like to be pedantic and point out that zero is a number. And award and upgrade seats come from different inventory -- for most people, upgrade inventory opens before saver award space, but for people with high enough United status, they may have award access to seats that don't have upgrade space. However, you are correct that they continually reevaluate inventory against projections and will open new upgrade (and/or award) space if their bookings remain below their target.