ahhhm. Nope, it is showing PZ obviously correctly for the TPAC leg, but only when upgrading from R, not when upgrading from W or K. Unless I am missing something! Of course BOS-SFO is not showing; that is expected.

The conversion messed up a reservation for me. My wife and I were waitlisted for F on a flight yesterday (CLE-LAX) but the conversion dropped me off the waitlist but left her on it. My account still showed points being requested for both, though. The 1K agent was rather stumped as to how that could happen but after 20 or 30 minutes she was able to get her supervisor to fix it. No surprise... the upgrade requests never cleared anyway.

No, you're not missing anything. I'm just saying, you can't trust the display, just like you couldn't trust the old, similar display. I promise you that if you bought that ticket in W or K, you'd be able to upgrade into the open PZ.

I think it just goes to reinforce the point that the "upgrade" search is poor and you should just go by inventory. I guess this gets much harder for "skip waitlist".

No, it's not.

We’d never want to charge you for something you get for free! 😊 Platinum members receive Economy Plus complimentary as a part of their suite of seating benefits. If it’s Economy Plus you desire, you should be able to change your seat on the seat map at no charge. As far as what Platinum members are eligible for, upon meeting Platinum requirements, members will receive 40 PlusPoints. If you had any existing Regional Premier Upgrades prior to conversion, they should have been converted to PlusPoints at a rate of 1 RPU = 20 PlusPoints. If you’d like to upgrade your upcoming reservation to CDG to Premium Plus or Polaris, simply go to Reservations > Change or View Reservations on United.com, and within the My Trips view click on your trip and select the upgrade button. If you have PlusPoints in your account, you should see an option to upgrade your flight using PlusPoints. Hope this helps!

Actually, doesn't it make it *easier* to skip the (non-existent) waitlist and use up (a lot) more points when you don't need to? (ie, ZN and PZ>0, but it looks like only ZN > 0?)

Probably in the minority here, but with the PP changes, short-term I'm happy. I was able to burn what would have been 2 expiring GPUs, and apply 80PP on a S-class fare AMS-IAD, and immediately confirmed the Polaris upgrade.

How does this work for partner connections? My UA leg cleared (80 points - skipped the waitlist on a cheapo fare), but the short intra-asia NH leg did not clear. Should it have? Will it? Do I need to monitor the loads to see if a particular fare class pops up? Do I need to spend additional points to get it to clear?

They still deduct the full amount of your requested upgrade when you clear to a partial cabin. Long haul sub W fare request for premium plus and business. Request cleared for premium plus but 80 +P was deducted. Called and the said refund would be processed after flight ends. Anyone else have the same experience?

It doesn't.
No, no, no, and no. (Incidentally, you didn't "skip the waitlist" -- there was no waitlist).

You can't upgrade discount fares on partner airlines. If you had bought at least a U fare, or Premium Economy G/E fares (UA O/A), you could have spent 40 points to upgrade the UA flight and 40 more to (try to) upgrade the NH flight.

That's exactly as documented.

If that's the case. They should really tweak their upgrade emails. False hopes with no indication of cabin. Just saw the points get deducted and assumed.

Got it. Thanks! I read the wiki in this thread a couple times, and it wasn't clear to me. Could just be me, but someone may want to update.

Thanks very much for explaining it. Next time I should check about upfaring the partner leg or do both legs need to be in the fare classes you've stated?

OK, then what is it?

cfischer - I don't think you're missing anything per se. But I stand by my comment that this is a DISPLAY issue caused by married segment logic. It's broken down for me like this:

BOS-SFO has no PZ open. Therefore, the upgrade is showing 'waitlist' for all cabins because there's no PZ.
SFO-HKG has PZ open (9+). However, the availability of the upgrade from coach (W, V, etc.) is showing "waitlist" because BOS-SFO is PZ=0. Therefore, married segments show both flights have zero PZ. This is also why the flight availability in your post shows PZ=0 on the SFO-HKG leg. For the Premium Plus upgrade it's showing it can confirm the upgrade because it's seeing you booked in a different fare code ("R" in this case). Since there is no "R" on BOS-SFO, it can show availability for the upgrade because there is no married segment in the same fare class for the first leg.

Maybe "married segment" isn't the correct technical term to use here but it gets my point across that the display is a result of both legs being shown together and the availability across both of them.

So back to my original reply, you can search the itineraries you want to take (BOS-SFO-HKG, etc.) to get an idea of fare. But, as has always been the case, you have to search each individual segment for upgrade availability to see what will confirm upon ticketing and what will be waitlisted.

-RM

99 times out of 100, it's much cheaper to up-fare the entire trip than to up-fare a single leg.

Note that unless you have a plethora of PlusPoints, I'm not sure I'd want to pay a premium plus use a bunch of additional points in order to upgrade an intra-Asia flight, unless it's something like KUL, SIN, CGK, or BKK -- in which case, I'd probably try to route through HKG or SIN instead. :)

I think this is the key point, and I agree completely.