Hi,

I just booked UA 876 DEN-NRT on 11/15 in H, and upgraded using miles. The flight actually has a plane change in SEA. Seatcounter says there are NC seats available for SEA-NRT, but none for DEN-SEA. However, United is showing the entire upgrade as waitlisted.

I called the 1P line, and the agent told me she couldn't do anything, although the SEA-NRT are indeed available; I would have to rebook separate segments. Is this my only option to get the SEA-NRT upgrade confirmed?

Cancel the upgrade and try using the automated attendant on the phone to upgrade SEA-NRT time. It probably won't work. If so, I think canceling the itin is your only recourse.

Next time fly out of COS and avoid all these DEN-originated quasi-international direct flights.

Flying out of COS is much less convenient than flying out of DEN, schedule-wise, I'm sure.

Just next time, book individual segments.

Yeah there is a similar posting just about every week with this problem. You are stuck and won't be able to upgrade until both segments have upgrade space. As UnitedSkies said, next time use the multi city option on United.com when booking and do DEN-SEA and SEA-NRT as separate segments. NEVER book a direct flight with a stop as 1 segment.

The other negative you're going to experience is that UA will give you award miles for a nonstop DEN-NRT instead of DEN-SEA-NRT. In this instance the difference is negligible (6 miles). But there are plenty of routes where the difference is much bigger, such as SEA-IAD-FRA (flight 916, segments flown separately you earn 6,386 miles) but if you book it direct you only earn the nonstop SEA-FRA (5,108 miles).

Not for me.

Seriously my last TATL and TPAC started and ended in COS. COS-SFO, COS-LAX, COS-SFO works just fine, though except for COS-ORD, you often have to suffer a CRJ200.

Thanks all. I rebooked the flight as separate segments.

Ya, this was probably the easiest move