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Like American and Delta, United’s flying wide-body international aircraft on several domestic routes — with more planes on the way. American Airlines and United are operating three-cabin planes on some routes, with first, business and economy-class cabins, and both carriers are handling upgrades in their own peculiar way. United’s strategy is a bit more puzzling though, in my opinion.
The challenge here is that UA seems to be swapping between two- and three-cabin 777s frequently, so the airline isn’t selling the first-class cabin on any of these Newark transcons — you can only purchase a seat in economy or BusinessFirst. That leaves eight first-class seats empty — as many as 64 unsold seats each day.
Rather than let these premium seats go out empty, though, a special department at United (within revenue management, it seems) is manually “upgrading” select passengers within 24 hours of departure. United agents prioritize upgrades first based on status (starting with Global Services), followed by the fare purchased — since this process is handled manually, it’s possible that agents are upgrading based not only on status and fare class, but also the actual cost of the ticket. If some seats are empty when it’s time for the flight to board, they’ll go to non-revenue passengers — gate agents can only upgrade BusinessFirst passengers if the business-class cabin is oversold, as is the case with international flights.
I attempted to snag one of these Global First seats on the Newark-San Francisco leg before my inaugural Singapore flight last week, but the airport and 1K desk agents didn’t see any availability in first class, even though three seats were unoccupied. All of the agents I spoke to referenced a memo that was sent last month, explaining the process for assigning these seats that I described above. Long story short, unless you’re spending a lot of money with United, you’re not going to get one of these Global First seats — miles, upgrade certificates or even cash won’t help you out here. And that’s a shame, since United’s 8-across BusinessFirst is certainly something you’ll want to avoid.
Source: thepointsguy.com