availability of upgrades?
 

I am waitlisted on UA 837 and UA 852 (travelling the week of Dec 8th). Anybody know how long it takes for these to clear (I'm 1K) and if I can check seat inventory someplace?

Thanks

Very interesting question, malgudi, and one which I have been trying to ask for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, every time a thread starts on UA on this subject, the Moderators close it down for some mysterious reason. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rolleyes.gif

The only thing I know how to do now is to go into the UA site and set up a dummy reservation in 1st or business to see what seats are open. I am not even sure how accurate that is.

I sure wish there were an easier way and hope that the Moderators leave this thread open so we can get some current input.

If anybody has any better ideas, I would greatly appreciate their input.

You can still check seat maps (and inventory for standard buckets in Japanese) at

http://www.airtravel.tk/

The seatmaps will give you a general idea of how full the flight is in the class you are interested in but it will not be a very accurate indicator of how many seats are left. But the inventory and thye seatmap can be used together to get some reasonable idea of the situation. If you see C0 in the inventory and all seats in C assigned in the seatmap or the seatmap comes up saying the map is not available at this time for C, you are most likely not going to get an upgrade. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

You can sometimes get lucky by using united.com. Be sure you are in expert mode and you can sometimes see availability (check out Oz's link on the fare codes.) Go to the Award travel. Note you sometimes have to book a first or economy to see the business buckets. However, if there are no award seats, you can't see availabilty.

Don't forget in expert mode you can check out UA availability like you did before. You can even access the seat map - just make a dummy booking. You only need to pick the flights and select a traveller profile. It will be at the bottom to select seats.

[This message has been edited by LHR Tim (edited 11-09-2003).]

Thanks for the input.

Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) they called at about 2:00 a.m., confirming our upgrades for next weekend. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rolleyes.gif http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rolleyes.gif Really, just how urgent is this news??? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/eek.gif

Usually, I try to book flights that I can confirm at the time of booking, but sometimes that is just not possible. In those cases I make sure that there is a lot of open space "for sale". This particular flight had one leg that worried me because it got down to 6 open seats "For Sale" about three weeks out. Then, Friday, there were magically 12 seats open for sale. Sup with that??? And on Sunday (actually Monday morning) they called with the confirmation of the last two upgrades. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

LHR Tim, what is this Oz fare code to which you refer???

I will be gladly awoken at any hour to find out an upgrade cleared, especially long-haul such as SFO-NRT! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

However, did UA the person call, or did EasyUpdate call? You can specify "privacy hours" within EasyUpdate so you're not disturbed.

He is referring to this thread:
Thread listing all known UA revenue and award booking codes and a summary of each one
which explains how to find upgrade inventory.

Thanks for the link. I need to take some time to read (internalize) all of this information one of these days.

So far we have been pretty lucky--never ending up in coach on an international flight, or even a trans-con for a good long while--using the dummy reservation mode, or just asking a reservation agent, before we book. When we do actual award tickets, we just won't book them if we can't get what we want at the time of booking, but, of course, at this stage of our life, we don't do much award travel. That will come with retirement, where we will have even more options on travel dates most of the time. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

Ok I'm going to scream. I was booked on 876 from NRT to SEA on 11/21, even had a confirmed upgrade to business (thank you sweet spot), then the world turned upside down and I had to change to UA 800 on 11/19 from NRT to JFK. Tried to get on the upgrade list and they said it was "closed".

Could life get any worse? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

You'll live http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rolleyes.gif

You should call back CONSTANTLY and keep trying to get yourself on the w/l. Closed w/l in my recent experience on HKG flights does not mean that upgrade space won't open up prior to flight day.

UScolorado1k, how many seats are there left for sale on your flight?

kv99 is right. Just keep calling until you get on the list and upgraded even.

You never know what will happen if you hang in there. We were recently upgraded on a flight where 1st is showing sold out. Like even when you try to buy a first class ticket, it puts you in coach. You just never, never know. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

I'm calling twice a day, so hopefully something will happen. Even if it doesn't, I'm going to put a sad face on when I check in at NRT and hopefully something nice will happen to me. It's worked before, maybe it will work this time... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

What really bums me out on this one is that the seat map shows 12 business class seats still unsold and about 20 coach seats... I go DEN-NRT once or twice a month and UA generally lets me get on the upgrade list even when the flight is oversold. I know that "operations" closes this list when it reaches a certain size, but it is still very, very irritating!

See Miles Buzz. Yet another service bites the dust! No more seat maps :-(

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum.../009504-5.html

Only way is via united.com and make a dummy booking. Or use FFassistant for searching.

How long before UA takes away expert mode???