W fare worth it?
 

Booking for a trip to Japan in February. CLE to CTS (Sapporo) connecting in EWR and HND. Looking to book economy and apply a family members plus points for an upgrade. Currently no PZ inventory available. Do you think the odds are decent enough for the upgrade to justify spending the extra $300 on a W fare ticket over discounted economy?

Thanks

I booked a W fare on CLE - SFO flight for my Mom hoping it would increase the chance of an upgrade. Well, it didn't work fwiw. I posted about and basically got laughed at here on FT so curious about what others say.

Only you can judge that. I would pay it without a second thought.

Much better odds with purchasing PremPlus (PremEcon) which tends to be similar in cost if R space is available.

Since Status (and PremPlus) are higher priority for upgrades than any economy fare, purchasing a higher economy fare for a non-status person who with W fare will not have a great chance of upgrade (and the upfare will be wasted)

For me, only confirmed upgrades (PlusPoints) at booking, possibly consideration of R fare (lowest PE fare), or scorching cheap paid upgrades are in the cards. If I can't be sure of an upgrade/likely upgrade, I am team lowest fare, and spending the $ elsewhere - e.g. at destination.

To its credit, United has basically perfected the art of premium cabin monetization. I am not playing lottery odds, or refreshing upgrade page every five seconds.

Full disclosure, I may be one of the few on here who book and fly on basic economy fares (having logged over 100K miles on BE), and/or fly carriers like F9 (Frontier), so my POV may be different than most frequent flyers.

I would not pay it because chance for a succesful upgrade would be slim for EWR-HND. There is a slightly better chance for IAD-HND.

Isn't it 40 fewer plus points for a W vs. lower fare classes? That would be the ONLY sane reason to spend extra money for a higher economy fare class.

Yes, it is.

If there are +Ps sitting around that would otherwise go unused, then OP is still better off saving the $300 per person. Of course, it might be hard to predict future use cases for +Ps in February, the first month of the +P expiration cycle.

I haven't gotten a PlusPoints UG on a W fare from IAD/EWR-HND in over 2 years now. I have gotten a couple of UGs from P+, but the price of that is climbing. My PlusPoints success rate to HND is a little less than 50% from paid P+.

Well we shall see, booked a W fare which ended up only being about $200 more. Crossing my fingers that being the offseason helps. Hopeful but not counting on it.

As noted above, W fare is 40 PP. I only book W fare if I want to save some PP and when there is PZ space. I would never book W to increase my upgrade chances. Instead I would book PE to increase upgrade chances.

Interesting that some here pay for W to "save" PPs. For me that is act of insanity. I guess it is all about how you travel and how you use them. Next year I plan on using my PPs for family status upgrades so perhaps I may need to save a few points so who knows maybe even I'll eventually have to purchase W but I can't see doing it regularly. My past experience is that they have been a complete joke as far as a domestic travel upgrade device. I do applaud UA for at least now providing options on how to dump them.

I do it frequently. Recently for me it was a $26 fare difference (between the S and W fares) on a WAS-KHH booking where the international segments had confirmable PZ upgrade inventory available. I'll gladly pay $26 extra to save 40 PPs any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Usually, I find it's frequently $200 or less to just buy-up to W on the routes I'm looking at. If there's no confirmable PZ space at time of booking, then I'm typically looking at just booking Premium Plus.

-FlyerBeek

"where the international segments had confirmable PZ upgrade inventory available." Here lies the difference, almost never finding PZ for my flights it doesn't make sense. But given your situation I can sort of see it. I still ending up eating literally hundreds of PPs at the end of the year so hard to justify trying to "save" them in almost any scenario. I realize others find ways to use them but FT is filled with pax like me that find them rather worthless. As I stated above I'll be using them for other things now going forward such as status upgrades for family.