dcsnowwake

on an upcoming trip my upgrade says DENIED

anyone know why? there are plenty of seats open in business and I am 1p.
LAX-IAD 3-24 on the 7am flight on the 777.

WineCountryUA

as reading this thread will show, the DENIED is meaningless. Ignore.

dcsnowwake

I did not see this thread, thanks for moving it Mod.
interesting, just another .BOMB issue. thanks

CASAFlyer

Any recent experience with the "upgrade denied" message?

Last night .bomb really messed up the reservation record for an upcoming trip to Germany. I was waitlisted for an upgrade with miles (full Y --> C) and the overwater segment waitlist for the inbound disappeared, showing me confirmed in Y only. In addition, the outbound domestic portion entered UDU window and the upgrade was changed from waitlisted to denied. [My guess is a clash between UDU and instrument]. A call to the 1k desk nicely solved the inbound TATL issue as I had cleared to C and now that part of the record is clean. For the domestic outbound flight, the representative tells me that I am still waitlisted and nothing to worry about.

Is this still the common wisdom on FT? Just ignore the "denied" message?

Thanks!

Jilani

My most recent experience was IAD-LAX on May 27. I had been waitlisted for a mileage upgrade for two months; when the UDU window opened, the status changed to Upgrade: Denied. I called in to make sure I was correctly waitlisted for a UDU. I was assured that I was, and the upgrade did in fact clear two days out.

CASAFlyer

Thanks Jilani! Quite helpful to hear a recent confirmation that the "denied" message can still lead to upgrades.

Edit on Jun 22: Cleared! Now I have a confirmed seat in NF, but upgrade is still "denied": it is fine, I have no desire to sit in the cockpit

NYCSINUA

Reading this thread, it seems like Upgrade Denied is often a glitch more than anything else, but I'm still wondering if I should be concerned.

I'm a newbie 1K who's flying LGA-ORD-MSP on 7/14. Bought tickets while still 1P, but called UA Res to take out and re-enter MP no once I hit 1K.

At 100-hour mark, UDU did not clear, but did not go to Waitlisted either. Was still listed as Pending. So at about T-90, called 1K desk and CSR immediately cleared ORD-MSP into NF and added another waitlisted NF segment for LGA-ORD. interestingly, original segment in K still showed Upgrade Pending.

This morning, after T-72, I login to .bomb and noticed that waitlisted NF segment became Upgrade Denied, and there was no more Upgrade Pending message for original segment in K.

Called 1K desk and CSR didn't seem to know what I was talking about. Said I was still on priority waitlist, and that .bomb shows Upgrade Denied cos it is not currently available. Flight is indeed NF0. Should I be concerned? Cleared LGA-ORD a good number of times as a 1P, and even intentionally chose flight on 752 to increase chances of upgrade. .bomb currently showing F8 A8. How good are my chances? Thanks for input!

Cheers,
NYCSINUA

1KHI

First time seeing the message Upgrade Denied on the outbound segment. I suspect had to do with a recent change on the inbound segment of my reservation. Alternatively, it can be due to a system glitch. It didn't put me in the waitlist at the 100hr mark, 1k desk manually added me after calling at T-90.

1k desk and RCC agent assured me I'm on the waitlist, so hopefully it will be just a poor choice of words.

TWA Guy

I had it too for a flight today and UA res said it didn't mean anything and I'm still on the waitlist for an upgrade.

1KHI

My upgrade cleared Today. Even though it cleared, there's still an upgrade: denied label. Mobile application doesn't show that segment and didn't allow me to check in. However, regular website showed it and allowed me to check in.

LosPenguinosII

reading recent replies, i thought "denied" is a good indication of upgrade
being cleared, but calling ua res, i found it is still just waitlisted.

qukslvr619

So there are reports of upgrade pending going to upgrade denied. Has anyone had the upgrade clear on one segment and the second disappear?

I called UA and they claim I am "on the list" for the flight in question. But the other screwy thing is that the return trip is on CO flights but doesn't show up at all. When I view the PNR on CO it shows the UA outbound and CO return but it doesn't show 1 of the 2 UA segments that I actually cleared on.

Jorgen

Resurrecting this old thread because I've just got "Upgrade: Denied" myself on one of my legs at T-72 hours.

Based on most of the anecdotal data points in this thread, it seems like most stories which start off "Upgrade: Denied" seem to end with "I got the upgrade anyway". But I doubt that'll be the case for me.

The confusion seems to arise because I have a domestic and an international leg. I put in for a miles+copay upgrade to cover both legs, and the domestic leg only has changed from "Waitlisted" to "Denied" while the international leg remains "waitlisted".

I don't hold out much hope of getting either upgrade, though. The domestic leg is hub to hub (SFO-EWR) and the seatmap is jam-packed, while the international leg (EWR-ZRH, UA978 1/14/11) seems to have no biz-class seats left at all according to my dummy booking. I suppose it's possible that someone in Biz will upgrade to First, though, leaving a seat available.

I don't mind not getting an upgrade and saving myself 20,000 points and $550, but boy, United sure does need a less confusing way of communicating to people the status of their upgrade requests.

Update to previous message: the sector that said "Upgrade denied" now says both "Confirmed" and "Denied". It let me re-select my seat, so I took 1A.

However, I'm now seriously confused -- did I get upgraded on UDU or on my miles+copay request?

My miles+copay request still hasn't gone through for the long international sector, and frankly I doubt that it will due to the fact that the business-class cabin appears to be full already. So I really want to make sure I don't wind up in a situation where I pay 20,000 miles and $550 and only get upgraded for the domestic leg. Can anyone confirm that this can't happen?

---

(Later)

Replying to myself again (just for the benefit of anyone in the far future who has this same problem) I called up and they told me (a) that my domestic leg[listed as both cleared and denied online] was definitely cleared, but (b) my international leg was waitlisted and extremely unlikely to clear.

Apparently under these circumstances if the second leg doesn't clear then I'll just be charged the miles+copay (or miles + no copay in this case) for the first leg and not the second. Sounds reasonable, although I don't like the fact that it's 20,000 miles anyway with the only difference being the $550 copay.

She also reassured me that the UDU list was not looking 1P-friendly so I wouldn't be getting back into First if I chose to remove the upgrade. I think I'll stick with the upgrade this time, though I don't plan to make a habit of paying 20,000 miles to upgrade trans-cons.

---

tl;dr: Got "upgrade denied", meant upgrade cleared. Another data point for you.

RobOnLI

I just experienced this Upgrade: Denied problem for the first time.

I had a segment waitlisted with an SWU that is part of an international ticket. IAD-SEA showed as Upgrade: Waitlisted via the SWU. As soon as the UDU window hit and no NF seats were open it went to Upgrade: Denied. I called UA to confirm all was OK and the agent was confused why I would be seeing Upgrade: Denied. She assured me that I was on a "priority waitlist".

Today the upgrade cleared. The reservation now only has one entry for IAD-SEA but it still says Upgrade: Denied. I'm able to pick a seat in F with no problem and it sticks so I doubt I'll have any issues at the airport when I check-in.

This is one situation where I don't want to bring a printout of the reservation with me because they can point to the Upgrade: Denied wording and actually deny my upgrade Seems like per the other posts in this thread that I shouldn't expect any problems anyway.

-RM