Upgrade Math
 

A few of my friends are long-time 1K folks.
They say can't recall not having upgrades go through.
I have asked how do they have enough when you only get enough CR1 for 4 roundtrips per year and 3 SWUs. they have said that as 1k's they often get bonus CR1s.
Is that possible?

1ks receive two CR1s every three months (quarterly) in which they fly 10,000 miles.

You get 2 CR-1's per quarter as a 1K if you fly 10K UA BIS, max is 2 per qtr, 8 per year. You get 6 SWU's on qualification/renewal. You also get 4 500 mile upgrades for every 10K UA BIS. It ends up being a lot of upgrades--I've had different types expire unused, but I am almost always in F or C.

The two bonus CR-1's might have been from the Elite Choice program, which I think was a choice at 125K.

And if everything else gets used, one can always use some miles to upgrade...

To add....
Although one may only receive 2 CR-1's every quarter, there is no upperbound for the amount of e-500's one may get, theoratically ;)

Plus, when SWU and CR1 clear, they upgrade the whole one-way itinerary. For example, for a roundtrip JFK-ORD-SFO-DEN-JFK, to upgrade one way JFK-ORD-SFO or SFO-DEN-JFK, you only need 1 CR1, if all segments clear, whereas you will need 2-8 e-500s depending on multiple factors: 1)if all segments clear 2)if so, if they all clear prior checking in :cool:

Million milers also get two CR-1s at the beginning of each year.

all I know is that the waitlist for UA 74 last Sunday was slippery...we started as 5th and 6th and upon last inquiry were 13th and 14th (out of 40). the drop in rank order was probably due to folks with higher status requesting upgrades after we initially requested ours.

Not if there's a stop-over. That's when mileage upgrades are better.

I thought that I would add some math to this thread...

Suppose that the average SWU is used for 5,000 miles of flights and the average CR1 for 2,000 miles of flights. Then this will upgrade 6*5000 + 8*2000 = 46,000 worth of miles. If the 1k flys exactly 100,000 miles a year, they earn 40 of the 500 mile upgrades, which upgrade an average of 400 miles each giving another 16,000 miles of upgrades.

That seems to say that if you flew exactly 100,000 miles on cheap tickets, (ie nothing that gives you extra EQMs or Y/B fares with complimentary upgrades) the average 'cheap ticket' 1k could upgrade 62,000 miles of the 100,000 miles flown. For many people, given that there is no F on many UX flights or any TED flights, and why bother upgrading a short mainline flight if you have a good seat in E+ (eg row 6 in an Airbus), this pretty much upgrades everything.

Now there are many things that can alter this scenario. E.g. if you buy Y or B fares the upgrade is free (no 500 milers) and you get 1.5 EQMs ..... and my averages are numbers plucked out of thin air ... but you get the idea.

Ah... learn one more thing...
If you don't mind, could you give an example? Boy this place is great! ^

With the 500 milers (if it clears beforehand) you can upgrade more miles than the certs used. eg. SEA-LAX-ORD-MSY would generate more miles than coupons used as the point to point SEA-MSY distance is used for upgrade cert calculations, but miles earned is miles flown.

I fly 9000 miles to Asia per SWU.

So my math would allow a much higher percentage of the 100,000 miles upgraded.

Add the odd Y/Q-up fare, and you're reaching almost 100%.

This is a trip we did a couple of years ago. SFO-NRT-(stop 7 days)-BKK-(stop 7 days)-NRT-SFO. This is officially an SFO-BKK round trip with a stopver at NRT. We used one mileage upgrade to upgrade both SFO-NRT and NRT-BKK (and one SWU for the BKK-NRT-SFO return since there was no stopover). It would have taken two SWUs to do the outbound (anything over 12 hours is a stop for SWU purposes).

Thanks.... ^
learned a new trick ... :cool:

I am at 100%, and here is an example of how it can easily work:

TPA-SIN three times roundtrip is 60K EQM's, which will burn up my SWU's. 40 500 mile upgrades will get me around for another 20K EQM's, which is a total of 80K. The eight CR1's cover me for the remaining 20K. That being said, I live in TPA, so can't upgrade my immediate flights to DEN, IAD, and ORD. I still never ever run out of upgrades.

Working for the Govt., my fares (even the occasional YCA) do not qualify for the complimentary upgrade :( Though they do get the 1.5 EQMs.

However, enough of my trips are on TED, UX, short haul etc. that in practice I upgrade every flight I care about.