(With some assumptions made about routes) if your target flight will get you an open seat for sure, then you don't need +P.

Seems like the system isn't clearing waitlisted upgrade into RN instantly (known issue with GPUs thought it was fixed)
been a few hours since RN opened and still haven't cleared.

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Had the same issue yesterday with PN. It was PN5 and after 12 hours after my window the upgrade still didn't clear. Called GS and she said that it would clear at 72 hours. Told her she was absolutely incorrect. I asked her if she was really a GS agent. She was insulted I tried to explain to her how it works. She said do you want to speak to a supervisor? Of course, I said, more to tell the supervisor how wrong she was. Supervisor comes on, looks at reservation, and said that she would manually clear it as I was correct. I then asked her to educate the agent. She said she would.

The system that manages inventory and the system that clears the instrument waitlist are independent. This issue may never be fixed. I'd expect the behavior to be the same for RN (into Premium Plus) and PZ/PN (into Polaris).

Agree, waitlisted instruments have never cleared "instantly" and likely never will so long as UA is using SHARES.

That said, if waitlisted upgrades remain uncleared despite open inventory for a significant amount of time, it transitions from system feature to system error. Regardless, agents have been instructed not to clear them, which is UA's "solution" to the queue jump issuing that its systems have created.

Is this a recent change? It's been a year or two since I've had the need to try it but every time I've called in (in the past) the agent has cleared me if the inventory was available.

No it's not recent. It's discussed at length in the relevant threads.

They also won't let you cancel a waitlist request without supervisor approval, a rule implemented for the same reason.

At one point, I thought one could cancel an uncleared waitlist request online. Is this capability no longer there?

There are many anecdotal stories of being cleared by agents including some of my own but no they supposedly are not allowed to "push through" an upgrade. I suspect that since March there are more and more stories though of upgrades getting "pushed through". Seems like many of the previous "rules" are falling by the wayside lately.

They took that away, same reason they took away the ability to apply an instrument online inside T-24. As a roundabout, customer punishing "fix" to the queue jumping that's made possible by SHARES' inability to process the waitlist dynamically.

However, now
and
Waitlisted requests can be canceled but confirmed upgrades can only be canceled by cancelling or changing the flight.

You're right, thank you for the update.

I see, I think it's been over a year or two since I've needed to call in to try to get an upgrade cleared.
I guess it doesnt hurt to call and try, but it is good to know if you are correcting an error or asking for an exception.

Should this be added to the wiki? (I considered doing that but wasn't sure where it should go...)

David

Already in the wiki (the change in application deadline for PlusPoints as is the canceling a waitlisted request)