My first experience with United's "Unlimited Domestic Upgrades"

I've got two segs for Thursday, BUF-ORD on a 320, I was the only one in F after the 1k window, its now up to 6/12. the flight is now showing F6 Y0 and not a single person sitting in Y+, maybe its a school trip or something.

didn't clear at the window for ORD-SFO on a domestic 777, but sometime between 100 hours and 48 hours, the upgrade was confirmed. what's wired is seat assignment wasn't automatically given, the seat map still show about half the F cabin empty, but its only showing F3. So i guess don't rely too much on seat maps.

My first experience was right after the switch over. My DEN-ORD on a 3 cabin 777 didn't clear until the gate while boarding was going on, but did get me a double bump to F.

My ORD-DEN on a 2 cabin 777 didn't clear until well into boarding zone 3 and of the 35 people on the upgrade list only 3 of us got upgraded. The 1K behind me boarding said he wasn't all that thrilled with the new system. I had to agree.

My one UDU experience was SFO-ORD where an A319 was swapped with an international 767.
Every single GS, 1K, Premier Exec and Premier was upgraded. I'm not sure how they selected who got a seat in First versus Business.

> And one other thing I love about unlimited domestic upgrades as
> a mileage geek — it makes it very easy for us to figure out how
> many 1Ks are on a given flight. Not useful for anything, per se,
> but very interesting!

I am waitlisted for an upgrade on Saturday. I am within the 100 hr window for 1Ks, but haven't cleared yet (the status has changed from pending to waitlisted). The flight is F9 and NF0 at this time. 10 unassigned F seats. Let's say I clear at T-72 hrs. How do I know how many 1Ks cleared with me and how many 1Ps?

@ Oliver -- You don't, unfortunately. Can only tell if there's still confirmable upgrade space after the window.

@Lucky -- right. So sometimes you can tell how many cleared. The more interesting question, though, is: why didn't they clear 1K upgrades at the 100 hrs mark? This is a 757 from DEN into TPA, so I doubt they are going to see 9 or 10 more F tickets getting sold between now and Sunday. Oh the mysteries of UA managing inventory 🙂

I am a 1K and so far I am 0/2 on eligible flights, but both of my flights were on A319s to/from MEX. I've got a couple flights on 757s next week so hopefully it starts to work for me then.

Q fare? I guess you got some bump vouchers to burn? 😉

Hi! Which website do you go to, to actually check loads on flights! Thanks

@Jordan: Book a dummy award ticket on the same route with united.com set to expert mode in your profile settings. It'll show you all of the inventory buckets, NF is upgraded first while XF will be saver award first.

This mix will change once CO people start getting in

Lucky - was your Q fare from redeeming a VDB? I haven't been able to find a definitive answer as to whether or not booking with a VDB voucher will be eligible for UDU. I have an upcoming trip GSO-ORD-LAS that I booked using a VDB, which is booked into Q and W classes, but I didn't think bookings on a VDB were upgrade eligible.

@ Tommy -- I used a voucher, but not a DBCFREE. Such a voucher ("free" ticket from a bump) will not be eligible for UDU, unfortunately.

Most of my flights have been A fares so UDU hasn't come into play for me until last Saturday on an Ex-Plus RJ. I was upgraded 3 hours before the flight. There was one empty seat in F when we took off.

I just got back from an IAD-TPA-IAD trip over the past two days, and both of my upgrades cleared at the upgrade window even though I'm only a Premier. I'm sure it helped that it was on the 757.

I think I'm 6 for 8 so far w/1K....but, I agree with Mike; we need to wait and see mid-year once the OnePass folks are added into the queue.

Very interesting. As a CO Plat, I would only get upgraded on UA after all UGS, 1K and Premier Execs are upgraded... seems to me that would be unlikely, except on aircraft with the largest premium cabins.

David

Seems that less people are paying for seats as all these flights are only booked to 2-4 people, but maybe I'm wrong

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@Sean. Thanks!! 🙂