Hi Guys. Me again with another newb question on this.

I have booked ORD EWR LHR per your helping me above. EWR LHR confirmed in Polaris on 76.

Day before our trip I see a routing of ORD FRA LHR. ORD FRA on UA on a 78, FRA LHR on LH.

Does the process of applying Plus Points work exactly the same as above if second leg is operated by different carrier?

(Theoretically), I can follow same steps as above and cancel this one way trip (yet again) and rebook Y fare on same itinerary ORD FRA on UA and FRA LHR on LH, then apply Plus Points after booking and if PZ space for ORD FRA get confirmed upgrade....right?

I could care less about upgrade FRA LHR but if there is anything I can do proactively at time of booking to have Plus Points be applied to that leg I would certainly do that.

Prefer 78 over 76, and prefer evening departure of ORD FRA over starting ORD EWR LHR travel day with 1000 departure from ORD. I also just try to avoid EWR at all costs if I can.

Think this is something I can do? I appreciate you guys!

If you want to upgrade LH flights with PPs, see this thread:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...ht-credit.html
In nutshell, LH requires higher fare class and 40 PPs for each flight on your reservation, as well as native LH flight number. It is a more complicated process.

Key point the same of PlusPoints can not be used for a UA flight and a partner flight. Each require their own seperate PlusPoints. And as the prior post mentioned the process is different.

Yes. As noted, your request will not extend to the LH leg, and you'd have to use extra PlusPoints and go to the trouble of trying to get a native LH flight number for that. I can't imagine it being worth it for Euro Business. However, the PZ space on ORD-FRA will clear immediately despite the ineligible segment on the itinerary.

​​​​​Last night (>72 hours for the last flights) tried calling the MPSC and got the "if you aren't calling about travel in the next 3 days, get lost because we're too cheap to have adequate staffing" recording, so I tried the "chat" option.

The bot was predictably useless but asked the bot for a human and got transferred to an "international reservations representative" who after some confusion (like asking me when I "canceled the upgrade") confirmed she saw the request "pending", canceled that request and the points immediately reappeared in my account.

Took about a half an hour (mostly waiting for the agent to reply) but done.

Thank you Wine, Sloan, and WXMU!

If I qualify for 1K via 24000 PQP and fly <54 PQF, do I get 40 PP (plat) + 280 PP (1K) = 320 or do I get 40PP (plat) + 280PP (1K) + 40PP (20x2 for being 6k over 18000 PQP) = 360? Text in the wiki in this thread and text from UA's page on PP suggests I would get 360PP, but I have a hard time imagining it would work that way in practice.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...701ff7e6ca.png

You will earn 360

Does getting UG'd to P+ with PPs decrease your odds of getting Polaris? The reason I ask is that I booked my wife and I on separate PNRs to TYO (S-fare plus 80 points-she was waitlisted for both cabins) and, about a month before our travel date, she got UG'd to P+. I never applied for the P+ option, waitlisting only for Polaris. I figured that she would have higher UG priority (we are both spend 1Ks) because she was in P+ already but, at the gate on the day of travel, I was UG'd to Polaris and she was left in P+.There were a total of 8 UGs to Polaris (I was number 5 on the list).

It should not.

Not true -- that shouldn't have affected her either.

where was she on the list?

10.

Thanks for the advice because I was seriously thinking about removing the UG requests to P+ on our next TYO flights. :tu:

It's very odd that you'd be that far apart on an S fare. That would mean that there were four other S fare 1K passengers who had tiebreakers between you. On a W fare, I could maybe see it, as some people will buy up to W to get the lower PlusPoint value.

Being upgraded into PE is not supposed to change the upgrade priority at all. Buying a sticker-type upgrade into PE, as opposed to using PlusPoints, anecdotally does increase your chances. I guess we could wait for a situation with PZ0 RN>0 and get somebody to try upgrading with and without the PE upgrade listed and see what happens... it's not out of the realm of possibility that UA screwed something up. But it's not supposed to be a help or a hindrance to clear to PE first.

Yeah, I don't know what happened, but there was 45 min gap between when I got my UG and the final 3 got theirs, right at boarding time. And my wife started higher on the list at OLCI (24 hours) and moved down 4 spots overnight while I only moved down 1. Lifetime status doesn't matter for priority does it? Because she is only Lifetime Gold.

No, lifetime status does not. There are several other tiebreakers that come into play -- I grabbed this from the Understanding the Upgrade List thread:

If you are the primary cardholder on a Club card or Presidential Plus card, and she is not, that would bump you to the front of the list of 1K S fare passengers. It's just odd that there were many 1K S fare passengers.

I think that buying S-fare fares is more common than you might think because many flyers have no need for additional PQP, and the UG rate with PPs is low enough that it isn't worth paying extra for W.

The reason we started buying S-fares is because I don't need any PQP due to lifetime status, and I have over 600 PPs that are mostly useless to me, so who cares if I use 80 or 40.
My wife could use the spend to get to 1K because she is only lifetime Gold, but she no longer likes flying UA domestically, preferring DL's domestic F service. We also always have back-up reservations on other carriers for our international flights in case our PPs don't clear. Then, we can cancel the UA flights for FFC and take the backups in J.

In the scenario mentioned in my opening post, I ended-up taking my wife's P+ seat and she got the Polaris seat, so she was happy. Our procedure is that, even if only one of us clears into Polaris, we still take the UA flights. If neither of us clears, which happens about 50% of the time, we end up flying another carrier.