jenniparks

I'm sure someone here can help.

I'm doing an multi-city itinerary on united and i need to make sure i book W on part of it- the part i am interested in upgrading on- and not the short leg i don't care about being in economy in. However united.com seems to only give me two choices- displays and books the lowest fare or displays and books w and higher fares when i search by upgradeable fares to region 2. so i either need to pay more for the entire trip or i have to give up the upgrades. ARGH. i turned united.com profile to expert mode so that it shows me the various fare classes available on a flight but won't actually let me choose from among all of them.

what is the solution to this problem?

BayAreaPilot

Book them as separate trips or use a travel agent.

FlyinHawaiian

I think this is one of those times where you are going to have to call reservations.

mduell

You're probably not going to be able to save much if anything by dropping the fare class on a short segment. A W fare with a stopover could easily be cheaper than a couple W one ways and a L one way.

Try matrix.itasoftware.com, forcing the W fare on the legs you care about, to see if there's any cheaper way than the W with a stopover.

PVDProf

I recently did this with my work TA to book PVD-SFO in L and SFO-SYD in W on the same ticket, saving $150 over PVD-SYD in W. When I called to apply the SWU, the 1K CSR specifically said she would not apply the SWU to PVD-SFO (after checking with supervisor), saying I had effectively two round-trip tickets on one record. For the moment, that's fine, since SFO-SYD hasn't cleared and I have other ways to upgrade PVD-SFO, but you may run into this. I'm a new 1K, and don't know whether the agent is right (advice appreciated ), but heads up.

warreng24

I had a similar situation.

I wanted BOS-ORD-LHR-ORD-BOS, with the ORD-LHR-ORD portions in at least W (SWU) and the BOS-ORD-BOS portion in the lowest available.

Of course ual.com wanted to put BOS-ORD-BOS in W as well. So, I called reservations TWICE and spoke with two different agents.

BOTH agents tried to book the domestic portions in a lower fare class, however, it turned out that it came out either the same or HIGHER than all W (as ual.com was quoting me). One of the agents claimed it was breaking some fare rules (for the low L and T fares on BOS-ORD-BOS).

Anyways, I called two separate agents. And both replicated the same results.

However, a couple of days later, I happened to be back on ual.com and did the same search, specifying the lowest available fare, and it spit out BOS-ORD in L, ORD-LHR-ORD in W, and ORD-BOS in T. I bought the tickets on the spot (as it was $150 cheaper than the all W itinerary ual.com had quoted me a few days earlier).

I suspect what had happened was that UA zero'ed out availability for the cheaper (non-upgradable) fare buckets on the ORD-LHR-ORD flights. Because after purchasing, I did a search on ITA (w/o specifying fare buckets) and ITA wasn't showing anything lower than W for ORD-LHR-ORD.

After booking on ual.com, I had no trouble using ual.com to apply upgrades. One SWU for the outbound and one for the inbound. IIRC, ORD-LHR-ORD cleared immediately. BOS-ORD cleared about 2 weeks before departure and ORD-BOS cleared with 48 hours of the flight.

jenniparks

brilliant! i made sure to pick flight times where there was no w available for the section i didn't want to upgrade then did the search on united specifying upgradeable fares and it shows the w fares for the the ones i wanted to upgrade and the cheaper fare for the one i didn't. THANK YOU.

Spiff

You weren't breaking the fare rules, you were breaking the fare (at ORD).

ORDnHKG

Beware that various fare class available doesn't mean you can choose it, even reservations cannot open up certain fare class to book, as some fare class only available when there is a sale, certain days of the week, etc. It is just like ORD-HKG often listed K and L as 9, but can I book it all the times ? No.

The solution is either a TA or book as separate tickets.