KBFinch

I believe this whole complimentary upgrade scheme for mileage plus participants sucks. I am 1K and have been for at least 5 years. I can not get any confirmed upgrades any more. I want to earn my upgrade and be able to use them as I used to. MP does not provide barely any confirmable upgrade space any more. I have a ton of miles and upgrades I always use to PAY for my upgrade space but these changes in their program have virtually wiped out my desire to PAY for and confirm my upgrade. Put the program back the way it was for us who want to earn and pay our way!

dgcpaphd

Your profile does not say where you are.

If you are located in an area such as SFO, IAD, BOS or certain other hubs, it is more difficult to get upgrades.

My United States base is LAX. I never have a problem getting upgrades. I fly a lot.

The system is not going to revert back to what it was unless something drastic happens with the economy or the airline.
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Seeksreal

For the most part i like the UDUs, but I had a situation lately where it worked against me. I was on an international C award ticket for a Sunday flight, but no F-space was available for award redemption on my first outbound domestic leg at time of booking. However I was waitlisted and seeing that it was a 757 with plenty of seats for sale, I figured that it would clear. However, inventory management refused to clear space in advance (they don't work weekends) and all F seats were filled up with UDUs. I thought this was a bad move by inventory management and served no purpose other than possibly giving someone there a moment of schadenfreude. Somehow a supported upgrade and seating in actual ticketed class should have priority over UDUs. I'm hoping that UA will realize this soon.

PDXPremier

The problem UA has been having lately with upgrades that stay "pending" and don't clear or waitlist at the upgrade windows should be making the GS/1K the most angry because if you don't watch each individual segment, you may be trying to fix a problem after the 1Ps and 2Ps have "forced" the upgrade or waitlist status by cancelling it and requesting it via the old e500 method...by the time you figure out that you weren't automatically upgraded, all the segment "babysitters" (like myself) have snatched up any NF inventory that was released. It really is a glitch that needs to get fixed soon...I can't imagine that they aren't getting a bunch of complaints about it....I have to say that as a 2P, I do get a few more upgrades than during the e500 days...I'm probably running about 50% which I'm ok with....in the old e500 days, my e500s would always clear but I had so few that I had to carefully "budget" them.

mre5765

Two posts, joined this month, UA attacked. Enough said.

On flights booked a week or more in advance, I am 100% successful.

On flights booked less than a week in advance or re-booked due to irrops I am over 50% successful. I don't count loss of upgrade due to irrops as a failure on udustats.com.

When I have a mid- or trans- con, I burn CR-1s to ensure my upgrade. 2 hours or less, I rely on UDU.

I flew UA economy on mainline once since UDU arrived - on Monday. This was for flight I booked and paid for at DEN two hours before scheduled departure. For a flight I purchased Monday afternoon for Tuesday, the upgrade (on as A320) cleared Monday night.

I dreaded UDU. I love UDU. I dread what the merge will do to UDU.

PTravel

Could you please explain how this works? I thought e500s were ancient history at this point.

gomike

elite members have phantom e500s in their account still.

FortFun

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...10-merged.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...d-threads.html

PTravel

Mine vanished last spring.

cblaisd

Correct. Not long ago I had a UA metal flight ticketed on US stock as a US codeshare (1/2 the price), therefore no UDU. But day of travel, I asked about an upgrade at check-in and was told that I still had a few "phantom" e500s. It wasn't quite enough, so she just op-upped me

mahasamatman

The real ones did, but they may still be there as phantoms. You may be able to pick e-500 from the dropdown to "request" UDU.

ccharles

My feelings about UDU were, and continue to be, mixed. Hard-to-upgrade routes don't seem to clear as fast as they used when supported with instruments, but I've certainly enjoyed a good number of upgrades that I would not have been willing to pay for.

It wasn't until yesterday that I noticed a serious downside to it (okay, I'm not that swift on the uptake ): Arriving in ORD much earlier than expected, I could have gotten on an earlier flight for the last leg to SFO. However, availability was --Y so getting home a bit sooner would have cost me that part of the CR1-supported upgrade. The flight looked far from full in Y and in the old days I'm pretty sure there would have been seats available in F. No more. I ended up taking the original flight, which was also full in F but the 200-odd seats in the back held only 150 pax, according to an FA.

PTravel

Ah, thanks for the tip! I've been flying between SNA and SFO a lot, lately, but I've been 100% on UDUs. I've got some transcon travel coming up, so I'll try it.

WIRunner

before UDU I had to burn 2 e500's to get myself upgraded. If I had none left then, oh well, zero chance of upgrade.
Now, I've been running as a 2P 100% on some routes, and about 45% on others. It has been a blessing of sorts. My travel patterns lately have drastically changed this year over past years, but if upgrades were done this year the same as last I can pretty much guarantee you that I'd have been at 25% or lower for the entire year, and all the while been wondering why there were so many empty seats upfront.

Starman

I believe this post confuses two rather unrelated things. If you want confirmed upgrades prior to your UDU window opening, then indeed UA IM has to allocated upgrade seats. And we all agree they are allocating fewer and fewer in advance of the UDU windows. But they could have been doing that exact same thing even if UDU never came along, and people were still using e500s at the window. So the problem is lack of allocation of upgradeable seats, not the existence of the UDU program. And I don't believe this is cause and effect. It's to UA's advantage not to "save" upgradeable seats for the UDU window -- after all, they are then giving them away truly for free. If instead they allocated upgradeable seats prior to the UDU window, then people are "paying" for them with miles, CR1s (and sometimes even cash copays, if they are not elite), burning off liabilities that UA wants to reduce. So I don't believe reduction in upgradeable seats before the UDU window has anything to do with UDU - it's a decision UA could well have made anyway about whether any of the seats could go as revenue F.

So, be angry about lack of NF inventory? Yes! I am too. Blame it on UDU? No, I don't think that's the cause. For people who want to upgrade prior to the UDU window, your and UA's interests are actually aligned: you want to pay, and they want you to.