Viasistina

The wife and I are planning to spend a week in Berlin and Copenhagen over the Thanksgiving holiday with some friends. I wanted to leave the Friday before Thanksgiving and return the Monday after to avoid the crush. I go to the United website and enter the dates and ask for eligible upgrades. Now up come dozens of flights with seats in all cabins wide open according to the seating charts. Plenty of tickets for sale, but there is also a notice saying there are no upgrade eligible seats available.

Are there blackout dates in place? what's up with no upgrades on empty flights? Not that it matters, but by the time I take this flight I will probably be a 1K, have over 1m miles in my account, and depending on what they do with the combined program with Continental, will be a 1M lifetime United flyer.

To top this off, United sends me an email to vote for them as the #1 program in the country. Not gonna happen!!
Can someone comment on this before I call PE and mileage plus and vent.
Thanks for listening.

6rugrats

Why would you complain to MP? They don't decide when to allocate award seats. It does not make financial sense for UA to release a lot of upgradeable seats for a holiday period this far in advance.

There are many, many threads discussing this issue. Often, seats will become available over time. You just have to be patient.

Viasistina

Just to be clear, I had every intention of buying two seats and trying to upgrade them, not just getting a pair of freebies.

CAPT Tee

Since UA does not fly to Berlin and Copenhagen directly, which flight are you trying to UG, and with what?

When you say no UG available, do you mean no UG confirmable seat or no UG eligible seat at all?

6rugrats

I understood this, and my answer remains the same. UA does not guarantee you will be able to upgrade. If you must sit a certain cabin, the only way to guarantee this (as much as anything can be guaranteed), is to purchase a seat in that cabin. Sometimes there are just no upgradeable seats.

snic

You can't find upgrade space just by doing a flight search on .bomb, as you can using CO.com. You have to use the methods described in this thread to search for it. Try that to identify flights with NC availability, then check the price for those exact flights using a separate search, then buy the ticket and request the upgrade. It should clear immediately.

I'm not sure what the message about "no upgrade eligible seats" means. It depends on exactly what you entered into the search form, and what the results were. It could be because the flights are *A flights instead of UA. It does NOT mean that the system checked for upgrade space (NC or NF inventory) on the flight and found none.

halls120

I've been flying UA consistently for the past 10 years, and have frequently purchased TATL seats and immediately upgraded them. Here are the three rules I go by: 1) never try to find available seats during a holiday; 2) book at least 4-5 months out; and 3) never try to do it on .bomb.

Over the past five years, I've been successful 100% of the time getting upgrades for my recreational travel.

UAPremExecflyer

It also helps to do a search. Lots of others have raised similar questions and got some answers and data to help them. Try this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...pgrades+harder

ocn2ocn

Upgrade inventory on all interantional flights is extremely difficult to find -- especially far in advance. The best strategy is to be flexible with dates, routing, destination, etc. and get a good international agent who is willing to spend the time searching alternatives. It can be very frustrating but usually you are able to find something with patience and flexibility.

LIH Prem

you might see a message like that if you searched united.com flights for SFO-Berlin on Nov 23, and it says:

"You have entered a valid upgrade, but there are no eligible flights available. Please try selecting other dates."

The top choice was UA flight numbers, CO metal via EWR. Of course most of us realize that UA doesn't fly to Berlin, but apparently CO does.

There were other routings offered, including via FRA on UA900. It's one of those where you have to break it up and look for upgrade availability on individual segments, if you can find any so far out and around a major US holiday.

-David

zrs70

Before blasting UA and MP, a little more research is important. Sounds like you didn't do a reward search. You have to plug in city pairs that UA flues to. During a cursory search, I see that UA has upgrade seats from FRA to IAD on your return date. I did nit look into the outbound. But you need to check all the possibilities. Check flights to ams, bru, cdg, muc, fra, zrh, gva, mad, lhr, fco. I will bet that you will find what you want!

Viasistina

I was interested in UA metal on the long haul portion to FRA..the connection would be Lufthansa which is fine. On the way back it would be connecting through AMS, FRA or Brussels to get on a UA flight.

The message on the search was:

"you have entered a valid upgrade, but there are no eligible flights available. Please try selecting other dates"

I was outbound from IAD on Friday Nov 18th and inbound Monday November 28th. This is going opposite what would be the holiday traffic flow.

LIH Prem

Use the methods described in post #6 and look for NC space availability on just the main UA segment(s), over the water. (for example, searching standard award availability IAD-FRA, etc.) Then, if you find any availability, you can book the ticket and call to do the upgrades on the UA segments using your miles + copay.

Finding availability is the tough part for you. Doesn't matter that it's the opposite flow. They would much rather sell the seat for revenue than release it for an upgrade.

expertflyer.com might be useful, but it's not free after your free trial expires.

-David

lhrsfo

I get a similar situation often when I'm trying to buy upgrade eligible fares. Usually the routing I want comes up with that message and an S fare. Other, less desirable routings, come up with W fares. However, when I check on W availability, it's there - just .bomb won't show it. I then call UA and the agents can force the sale of a W fare.

Viasistina

Thanks for all the help. I am just not familiar with this ".bomb" everyone refers to...can someone be more specific?