In July we made economy reservations on United for a January itinerary that takes us through Chicago and Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City.

Now, when I review our itinerary with the airline I see that we have confirmed upgrades with seating assignments for both of the flights, ORD to HKG and HKG to SGN as well as on the return. But, the itinerary also includes confirmed economy seats on one of the same four flights (the first one). That is to say that they have us in two different places on the same flight; economy and business.

I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth but am confused as to why we got the upgrade (there was a slight schedule change of only a few minutes), I wouldn’t give it another worry, except with two sets of confirmed reservations on the same flight, I am wondering if that is going to get us busted back to economy when we check in either for that particular flight or the following flights.

Does anyone have any experience with this type of thing?

I recently had two reservations on the same flight. It was from SGN as a matter of fact (SGN-HKG-SFO). I was flying on an economy ticket and I had upgraded my seat to business class using a System Wide Upgrade (SWU). The SWU in an electronic certificate and was a benefit of my (complimentary) 1K status in United Mileage Plus.

The flight segment from SGN-HKG was cancelled. I agreed to fly the next day as they were going to put me into business class and give me back the SWU. The ticket agent made me a reservation in economy and gave me a bp in row 38. Then she made a second reservation and bp in business class.

That's what it looked like in My Itineraries: a confirmed economy reservation and seat assignment, with booking class Y, I think (and not the M that I bought) along with a res and seat with booking class C (biz class) and not NC which is upgraded economy (on the itinerary rows where you see Upgrade: Confirmed it probably also says Booking Class: NC, right?). I actually earned the class of service bonuses based on the C class and it was that EQM bonus that will make me a 1K again next year.

So it sounds like you have a friend who gave you a couple of SWUs. Did anyone ask you for your MP number and ticket number? Or maybe a TA?

Go to united dot com and check your membership level to see if it is what you expected. But even if they gave you 1K status it would have been up to you to apply the SWUs. Also check your E-upgrade balance to see if you have any other surprises.

Maybe this is just a "feature" of the new united dot bomb and you will get busted back to economy but I would not expect that to happen. In fact, if you did get busted I would call to find out why.

And congrats on your good fortune! I've been on the ORD-HKG flight in economy and it is not very pleasant (though Hong Kong is worth the trip).

Good for you. And I agree with mrwunrful -- that ORD-HKG flight is longgggg (15+ hours, as I recall).

mrwunrfl:

Thanks for the input. I did check my Mileage Plus account and it shows no activity, probably because I have never flown United before. That’s funny isn’t it?

We were thinking that one possibility why we got the upgrade is that the flight now seems to be fully booked in economy and since we booked so early they moved us to business because there were still plenty of seats there. That’s just a guess.

My concern at this time is what is going to happen if we try to check-in on line. It probably won’t work because of the double booking issue, so we will have to wait until we arrive at the airport and deal with it face to face. I think that since there are two sets of seats reserved the agent will give us boarding passes for the best seats at that time. The flight in question is, in fact, the second leg of the trip. I hesitate to try to speak to someone at the airline in advance, although then we would know in advance. Is it better to just let sleeping dogs lay?

In your case, I wonder why the agent intentionally made a double reservation and issued two boarding passes.

I hope this works out for you. Strange things happen with United's systems, so you never know.

Frankly, I'd be a bit suspicious if this happened to me. Operational (complimentary) upgrades do not happen a month out; they happen at the gate, and they're supposed to follow a very specific protocol for who gets them (based on level of elite status and fare class paid). And, more and more, United is waiting to see if people buy up to business class ($500ish) at checkin before they dole out upgrades.

What does "My Itineraries" say for your booking classes -- economy (H, V, W, Q, etc) and business (NC, etc.)?

Good luck.

Please let us all know if you get those upgraded seats. I am a 2 million miler on AA and never got a free upgrade(except for my Executive Platinum years)

As the ticket agent gave me two seats she explained that she first had to get me on the flight in economy (by exchanging the economy ticket I held for the cancelled flight, I think) before getting me a C seat.

You should go to united dot com, click on Mileage Plus, click on Promotions, click on Air. Look for the link to the "U.S. to Hong Kong, Vietnam or China bonus Miles" offer. Register for that offer. You may not get any miles if you are credited for an economy booking class that is not listed, but maybe you will get 5000 or 7500. Or maybe you'll get the 10,000 bonus miles for C.

We got upgraded with United when flying from Sydney to LA - must have been looking a bit frazzled in the check out line and in need of a good sleep. Another flight not so lucky - had our 3 week old son with us but they did give us an extra seat in the middle - flight not totally full. When we boarded the flight a very loud lady asked the flight attendant to be moved as she did not want to have to endure a baby for 15 hours. No such luck for her and our new son slept soundly all the way only waking for feeding and changing.

In going over some of my old postings, I ran across this one.

It’s now a year later and this is how it turned out.

When we checked in the agent asked how we were going to pay for the upgrade and we said that we didn’t ask for the upgrade. She gave us boarding passes for the economy seats (that we paid for) on the first flight and business class boarding passes for the second flight.

On the return, the agent in Vietnam also asked us how we would pay for the upgrade and we gave him the same answer as before. He seemed to get a bit flustered as he looked into his computer and then walked over to another agent and talked a bit before telling us to take a seat in a waiting area while he sorted it out. After a short time he returned with Business Class boarding passes for both of the flights and said that he gave us a system wide upgrade and asked if that would be alright. I think that both of the flights were full and it was just easier to leave us where the seats had been assigned than try to move people around to get us back into the cheap seats. Wow, it was nice to fly half-way around the world in business class when we paid economy.


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Great ending to a strange story.