No 1st upgrades with United for 1ks? "Off limits"

[shogan1977]

Background info for this post: I am 1k and my wife is Premier Exec. We were travelling in paid for biz seats (D-class).

Yesterday my wife and I were checking in for a international UA flight at Dulles (IAD-BRU) only to be told that our pre-reserved seat assignments had been reallocated for "operational reasons" :mad:

Ok, I know these things happen, but nonetheless it is frustrating when you have made effort of ensuring you and your wife are sitting side-by-side for flight home.

I learned later from the person in the seat which I had reserved for months, that he also had reserved the seat months ago... :confused: Is that possible? Do airlines/United allow two biz class passengers to reserve the same seat? And if so how do they decide who ultimately gets the seat. Status?

To add insult to injury, when I politely inquired at check-in (with no expectations or feelings of entitlement) whether it might be possible to find two seats side-by-side in 1st the lady looked at me like a pariah and said "1st is completely off limits. That would be out of the questions" !?! := :eek:

Leaving aside her rude attitude, I would like to know if that is true? Should I as a 1k pax, travelling biz, not have any expectation at all of an upgrade? If so then what is the point of staying loyal to UA?

[Businesstraveller]

Sounds like your experience is commensurate with the general level of 'service' one can expect from many mainline US carriers. No wonder many folks choose SE Asia carriers (for example) if they have a choice. I know I do.

[Hotel Tango]

Did you take steps once on board to solve the problem with the help of CC and another pax to swap seats so that you and your wife could be together? Some US check-in staff are not very helpful and when it happened to me and my wife I sorted it out myself once on board. Generally speaking you'll always find someone willing to help out. Even if they had a valid "operational" reason (sounds more like "operational cock-up" to me) they should not treat premium pax the way they apparently did. Bad for business. In future take your business elsewhere and let them know it in writing why.

[Mark in CA]

United "service" can be all over the map. Once, when my wife and I were flying from SFO to Nagoya, Japan, I asked the gate attendant if it was still possible to purchase upgrades to so-called economy plus seats. She took our boarding passes and issued new ones that were upgraded, and then didn't charge us anything for it. But it was Christmas day.

[TSR2]

What's a 1K ?

[PAXboy]

Large corporates in ANY field, always try to help everyone by using automatic methods and then find that the old fashioned human contact would have done perfectly well! Unfortunately, humans cost more money than software.

I recall a very important flight, when I had booked my window seat and received assurances and my boarding pass was an aisle. As it was Concorde, I was (shall we say) 'irritated'.

Nowadays, I do not expect ANY customer service 'dept' to work as advertised.

[PA 18 151]

What's a 1K ?Highest tier in United's butt-in-seat mileage scheme. You need to fly 100,000 miles in a year, or something like 120 sectors. Used to be extremely good indeed in times gone by. Made it once, they really looked after you with a 1K card, and it was relatively easy to achieve if you had a lot of transatlantic business. The one below, Premier Exec, at 50k miles was a doddle to get, and pretty good too, but not quite 1K. In the good olde days......

[BlueTui]

I don't get the American culture that is obsessed with upgrades as part of an entitlement within a FF scheme. I am a silver member of both Virgin and British Airways and I don't expect any more than the sold benefits of said cards. I realise I'm not the most important customer on their flights there will be gold customers.

I am usually very lucky flying with Virgin and their codeshare partners, and cannot recall the last time I wasn't upgraded in some form or another. BA it's been a few years. But I wouldn't be "put out" if I hadn't got something for nothing just because of a piece of card I carry around.

Sorry if this comes across as harsh, it's not my intention I just read so many comments along the lines of this expecting upgrades when it isn't actually a benefit.

Supermarkets have loyalty cards, if I bought a pack of own brand biscuits, I wouldn't expect the shop assistant to replace them with a premium branded pack in their place.

[TSR2]

I don't get the American culture that is obsessed with upgrades as part of an entitlement within a FF scheme. I am a silver member of both Virgin and British Airways and I don't expect any more than the sold benefits of said cards. I realise I'm not the most important customer on their flights there will be gold customers.

Yes I agree.

I was a Gold Card member for 16 consecutive years. During that time I was never once offered, requested or expected an upgrade.

[Three Thousand Rule]

I don't get the American culture that is obsessed with upgrades as part of an entitlement within a FF scheme.

Maybe you should try flying in the USA a bit more before you start using words like 'obsessed.'

It is quite normal in the USA for passengers in FF schemes to receive upgrades as part of the package and thus they have expectations.

However, FF schemes (or some first class tickets) often do not provde access to lounges unless fees are paid for a membership scheme.

Different strokes for different folks.

[pwalhx]

Is there not a difference between a 'norm' and an 'entitlement' and I believe that was the point, some take a norm as an entitlement which is wrong.

I actually have a Silver card with BAand have been lucky to be upgraded several times, I class it as luck and never arrive at the airport with an expectation, your correct there is a vast difference between British and American culture.

[Three Thousand Rule]

The OP has already made it very clear that he did not have expectations.

For those who are not aware of how US FF programmes work, it is by no means unknown for certain FF pax to be entitled to an upgrade if a seat is available.

The same used to be true in Europe, with CSA airlines (2003 era.) I was entitled to an upgrade from Y to C so long as there was a seat free.

[PAXboy]

US carriers started many years ago with the idea that, if you upgraded your regular pax, they would like you more and be more likely to buy in C or F to be sure of a seat, as well as telling your friends.

It is my understanding that this got rather over toppled by the desire of folks for a bargain (who'd have guessed?) and that the expectation of the upgrades became paramount. Many DID promise this but found the burden of upgrades and FFMs could grow far more than they expected.

European carriers started down this route (pun intended) and then pulled back. But I sit to be corrected.

[Airspeedintervention]

Yes, subsidized carriers can certainly offer far better service.

[WHBM]

Maybe you should try flying in the USA a bit more before you start using words like 'obsessed.'

It is quite normal in the USA for passengers in FF schemes to receive upgrades as part of the package and thus they have expectations.
I am sorry to say that those of us from the other side of the Atlantic who do fly "a bit more" in the USA regularly stand back in sheer amazement at the scenes at the gate desk of all the supposedly-entitled-to-upgrade crowd, waving their frequent flyer cards in the air like they are the Munich Agreement document, elbowing and jostling one another, starting arguments about who trumps who - if anything the word Obsessed is a bit mild, it's like something from the kindergarten sometimes.

The whole upgrades thing has got completely out of hand in the US, to the extent that almost the entire F cabin is just made up of upgrades. It is especially galling that when they are all seated they have to tell their seatmate, who might in this case be on the connecting leg from a long transatlantic trip, and grateful for a little peace and quiet at this time, the full details of their frequent flyer entitlement.

It's especially grim on the odd flight which is only half full, where economy has plenty of empty seats, indeed empty rows, but the F cabin at the front is stuffed. Wonder if they do a proper weight-and-balance for this.

To compensate, F standards of service are nothing, and a 4-hour flight in F there has about the same standards of catering as a 4-hour flight in Y on, say, BA in Europe, served by less pleasant and sometimes downright hostile personnel. I've also been on F flights over an hour long over there where the catering, unbelievably, was absolutely zero. Meanwhile, back in Y, they appear to have given up catering altogether.

Commercially it's a great error, because many of those who were regular first class passengers now no longer find the need to buy it, because they normally get upgraded from Y anyway. How can they come back from this ?

[PAXboy]

Very interesting WHBM and jogs my memory from an article about ten years ago, where many carriers were finding that their obligations of FFMs already issued were weighing heavily on their balance sheet. They had (IIRC) to start aging them ouy and inducements to get people to use them up. Lastly, it was thought that, for smaller companies, the amount of FFMs that could be used would adversely affect a prospective buy out of the company.

As always, I sit to be corrected.

[Jarvy]

Not really connected with the original question but the entitlement culture is different from state to state as well as country to country. As an englishman living in New York city I find entitlement culture much worse here than in the UK as a whole, but also worse than in Connecticut where I lived before.
Mrs J was BA gold for 5 years and in that time she was upgraded twice both out of LHR.
On a recent trip to Japan with continental the 1st/business cabins were only 1/3 full so so not many people upgraded there then.

[PAXboy]

An American friend of mine found on her annual trips to the UK (DTW~LHR) to be upgraded more often ex-DTW than the reverse. During this period she was a middle aged woman, travelling alone and looking smart but the upgrades were consistently lop-sided. She ALWAYS bought in Y and got C many, many times. The carrier was BA.

[Chuchinchow]

As always, I sit to be corrected.

"Why stand when you can sit; why sit when you can lie down?"

- Winston S Churchill

[jp3492]

I'm a Brit ex-pat in the US and I travel on United almost exclusively to the tune of about 175k actual flight miles per year.

I fly with United because, while the fleet is somewhat old, and the service spotty at the best of times, the 'deal' with them (and many US carriers) is that they reward your loyalty through programmatic and complimentary upgrades. That is the expectation set forth, so it's not unreasonable to have a certain expectation in this regard, in fact, the FF program is really structured around this.

I can say in my experience, that the upgrade situation is not a 'free for all' United actually has a very organized way of managing upgrades, by ticket booking class, FF status and availability. The upgrade list is publically shown on monitors at most gates and is controlled by the booking system for the most part.

Additionally, I think a lot of people in Europe forget that the distances involved for everyday business and leisure travel are far greater than central Europe, therefore travel is signficantly more expensive. For instance, a 'daily' hop that I take from San Fran to Seattle, all in a days business, is 1600 miles return and at the very lowest $300, but usually $400-550 in cattle. This adds up quickly, to spending $15, $20 or even $25k annually domestically, therefore, the expectation is that for my loyalty I will be entitled to 'Unlimited Domestic Upgrades' per the criteria I listed above, which is the reason I continue to give them my money.

Now, having said that,

International flights are totally different. In order to be upgraded for Y->C or from C -> F you must have a suitable vehicle:

1. Pay the fare
2. Book an eligible fare and use one of the 6 systemwide upgrades you receive as a 1k member of the FF program
3. Book a reward ticket in that cabin with miles
4. Pay miles and money (similar to the above)
5. Pay an offered 'upgrade fee' ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars, just like BA does from E+

There are no freebies. The only way to get from C to A is as listed. Even then, the priority is exactly as other carries internationally, ticket price, then status etc.

I'm bemused by the 'Seppo bashing' on the thread, somebody mentioned Asian airlines - having flown multiple transpac segments on a variety of Star Alliance flights, I can certainly tell you that 'operation upgrades' are almost unheard of - Singapore Airlines will fly you in the class you booked, for example, nothing more and nothing less.

[rvv500]

United's upgrade system to 1 K members especially is by far the best in the industry. None of the Asian carriers come anywhere close to it.