Molvak

IME, my Itn's and .bomb have always shown this after the E-ticket has been issued. In reality, it's a fluke (IMHO), i have always had to use some type of upgrade instrument. We book all of our travel through DTS (Defense Travel System), and the tickects arent actually purchased until 2 business days prior to the flight! You can imagine the nail biting and hair pulling affect of this!

Nosmo King

Couple of thoughts, sorta, on topic.

Y/B upgrades, as stated above, never occur IME. You will get the occassional normal 1K op up, etc regardless of the govt fare.

Govt Y fares are usually "YCA" fares which the gate agents are pretty good at spotting. However, you WILL still get 150% EQMs for this fare. So there's one benny to it at least. A couple of intl legs on the YCA fare and your status builds pretty fast.

And DTS and the city pairs ... sigh. Good and bad things here. Good - you can select your fare. And that's all I'm going to say about that here. You can also call your servicing travel agent and have them ticket your flight in advance of the 3 day standard; but it takes a call and I've never really got any push back from them. With ticketing you can submit upgrades, of course. Bad news is we're locked into a carrier (unless you get a very visible exception) on a given route. United tends to have the intl legs from North Am to Asia and Europe, but AA has a lot of the domestic legs. So one gets middle status on both airlines, and never quite enough to push over the top to 1K or EXP - without personal travel, that is.

Diplomatico

Depends upon where you live. UA has LOTS of city pair flights from SAN.

I've had the ticket office buy the ticket as much as 2 months in advance. Never questioned, just tell them I'm applying for an upgrade.

John Thacker

The website is even more stupid than you think. I've bought (through corporate AmEx travel) Y/B fares that qualified for complimentary upgrades, the "a complimentary upgrade has been requested on your behalf" has shown up in My Itineraries, and never has this actually requested an upgrade. I've always had to call Reservations later (or ask a GA) and request the upgrade, and every time I've been told that "yes, your fare qualifies, but no complimentary upgrade was requested, ok, it's done now."

PHLGovFlyer

More discussion here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ur-behalf.html

Basically, just ignore the "complimentary upgrade" notices in all cases when traveling on a gov Y fare and you'll be fine. If you're being sponsored for an upgrade you should also tell your sponsor to ignore the notice too.

joeljack

How much to Gov't YCA fares cost in comparison to traditional Y or B fares? Just curious for a general rule of thumb...50% off? 75% off??

NightTripper

YCA are pretty doggone cheap. $340 R/T IAD-SFO. Nearly all my travel is YCA. Looking forward to 2010 when domestic UG drops from 8,000 miles to 5,000 miles.

Also, on topic, .bomb says he has requested the comp Y/B UG every time for me, never to materialize at the gate. Bummer, but clearly stated in the rules.

From experience: on delta/nwa, not only do they honor YCA with 1.5 EQM, but they provide comp Y/B upgrade AT TIME OF BOOKING.

beltway

It varies enormously. Some fares, esp long hauls between coastal hubs, are indeed bargains like this. OTOH, others are highway robbery, such as DCA-CAE, which you can't touch (even on the -CA capacity-controlled gov't contract fares) for less than $700 r/t.

FYI, the CityPair website shows all the fares (shown o/w, pretax). Instead of entering both endpoints on an itinerary, plug in a single airport code to see all the gummint contract fares from there to everywhere.

M3 T00.

cepheid

WOW! California YCAL is $309 o/w! Local gov'ts clearly don't have the same negotiating power... yikes!

PHLGovFlyer

Yep. The FY2009 contract the Federal Gov had with UA called for $663 Million in spend. That kind of revenue brings with it a lot of pricing power.

cepheid

And just to provide people with a point of reference: I just booked two SFO-IAD round-trips over Xmas... the cheapest available non-stops throughout that entire period were $529.20 non-refundable V fares.

PHLGovFlyer

Just discovered that UA's fed contract for FY2010 calls for up to $959 Million in spend. So when do I get my own A319...

gradient-echo

I didn't see it mentioned specifically on their website (or in the 1000+ post FT thread discussing it), but does anyone know if the new "unlimited upgrade" policy will exclude govt fares? I should make 1k soon, and that will be a pretty disappointing development if it does!

Portolan

I've read the posted T&C's and their is now mention on excluding government fares. Fortunately, they don't have their own distinct class so except for G (as I recall) fares, we should be good. Also logical (not that ypu can take much comfort in logic) since it eliminates the e500's which government fares earned.

That said, as a 1P I figure I will almost never see an upgrade whereas I've only ever had about 4 e500's expire to miles.

gradient-echo

Good point. I definitely agree that if they're going to replace the e500s and CR1s, we should at least still qualify. So at least in this one tiny respect, this is a small victory for the govt traveler ^! But...

Yah, I think you're absolutely right. Upgrades for 1P/2P/3Ps are going to be extremely rare, without spending miles + copay. Probably even for 1ks on govt fares, since there will be a glut of new 1ks next year thanks to DEQM, and fare basis is taken into account.