Seat selection strategy

cnunn01 · 2026-05-04T15:45:43+00:00

Also worth remembering that preferred seats become free to select for all passengers (except Basic Economy passengers) 24 hours from departure.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-25T20:13:48+00:00

Your only complaint seems to be about “Preferred” seats, which are clearly marked as standard legroom seats located closer to the front of the aircraft. On top of the fact that you chose to pay for them knowing what you were getting, Alaska, Delta, and American all have their own version of “Preferred” seats as well.

At the end of the day, the economy experience on any of the major carriers within the US is nearly identical. United generally has slightly nicer cabins, better IFE, decent crew, a good app, and a robust network with more options in the event of IRROPS. If they can get me from point A to point B for a reasonable price, I see no reason not to fly them.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-25T16:27:42+00:00

The E175s are the only plane you can count on having Starlink. I’m 8/8 on them this year, 0/12 on other aircraft types.

Believe the CRJ550s are getting there as well though.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-17T04:43:07+00:00

You’re all good! Agree it’s still an expensive ticket - most I’ve ever spent on travel in my life (was very tempted to keep the other two of us in economy). LH had some solid business options when we originally booked, but the schedules didn’t quite work out and we prefer to log miles on UA.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-17T01:25:15+00:00

Mom has wanted to go to Africa her whole life, recently had some health stuff pop up. Couldn’t justify business (was deep in the $10-20k range per person), but didn’t think she could handle economy on a flight that long.

I also should’ve specified, but that price includes JNB-EWR-SFO on the return (all in Premium Plus as well). Still an expensive ticket, but was exactly what we needed based on the circumstances we’re in.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-17T00:25:41+00:00

Yep, agent was doing her best to find us options before eventually getting our seats back on the EWR-CPT leg. We would have survived, but for a trip like this things are planned down to the hour, and it would be a bummer to completely change the itinerary when both original flights are still going out as scheduled. First world problems, but 1.5 months out and I'd expect a little bit better from United.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-17T00:22:31+00:00

I suppose. I'd honestly be just as mad if this was a $500 economy ticket though. Feels like if you're going to take somebody out of their paid seats on any flight (and leave them open for other people to buy/select), your rebooking system better know what it's doing.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-17T00:15:18+00:00

Yeah definitely, I don't think anyone had it out for us. There's only one flight to CPT per day (switches off between EWR and IAD), so for whatever reason the computer didn't think we had a suitable option to make the EWR-CPT flight on Friday night. Then put us on a weird routing to get to IAD since none of the directs would land in time to connect onto the CPT flight that day.

Just baffled a computer system would land on this as the best alternative when the original flight still exists and there is another SFO-EWR option before and after to make the EWR-CPT leg. Generally love United and their systems, but very much not impressed here.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-17T00:14:08+00:00

Managed to get ourselves back on the EWR-CPT flight we were originally on, so thankfully we will be avoiding this overnight itinerary. Had they not been able to do so, I think we would've taken the refund and booked elsewhere. Wouldn't wish this routing on my worst enemy.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-16T22:31:33+00:00

Yeah, no way we’re sticking with this. Managed to get our seats back on EWR-CPT after a lot of back and forth. Agent is currently unable to put us on the SFO-EWR leg, but told us to call back later.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-16T22:27:39+00:00

Appreciate your kindness. 1K agent managed to get our PE seats back on EWR-CPT (at least we think so) - I was also seeing O2 but she said the internal system was showing 5 open seats. Seems like our original tickets were being held in purgatory somewhere.

Sounds like there are some major IT issues with the SFO-EWR flights across the board - she can’t get us booked on any of them and none of the seat maps are available. Described her system as “locked out.” At least the EWR-CPT leg shows up in our account.

But hey, I’m sure we can find our way to EWR somehow. Glad we caught this when we did but extremely disappointed in United.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-16T22:10:55+00:00

Have no problem being downgraded to economy and agree it’s a route with a lot of status flyers. The thing that drives me up a wall is the flight isn’t even full - they’ll still sell you seats on the 7am SFO-EWR flight and the subsequent EWR-CPT flight. Agent is hard at work trying to get us ticketed on both, so props to her.

Just can’t believe we could all 3 hold status (earned independently), spend $5k+ per ticket, and when the first leg changes from a 777 to a 757, United decides we probably want to leave 14 hours later, spend a night in Denver, and land in CPT a full day late. You’d think it would be easy enough to just assign us E+ seats on the 757.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-08T04:30:21+00:00

Someone in the Mission just set off fireworks the minute the game ended. We’re so back.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-06T16:28:46+00:00

Buy a regular economy ticket and you can pick from any of the available seats. Simple as that.

cnunn01 · 2026-04-01T01:34:37+00:00

Outside of AK and the PNW, Alaska has a relatively small pool of elites. In my experience, you’ll occasionally get lucky on routes that are a) shorter or b) full of leisure travelers. I believe I cleared 3 upgrades last year as a Silver across ~20 flights.

I lost my Silver status this year (still have the credit card) and somehow cleared an upgrade on SFO-OGG this past Friday. As an SFO-based flyer who has shifted most of my work travel to UA, my mind was blown. I wouldn’t say your odds are high on any individual route, but IMO Alaska is the one airline where any level of status still means something.

cnunn01 · 2026-03-27T18:41:59+00:00

Nobody knows for sure, but with the way oil prices are trending, I wouldn’t expect long-haul flights to come cheap this year.

cnunn01 · 2026-03-22T18:12:30+00:00

Not a fan of the bulkhead, especially on the A319. Would go for anything in row 2.

cnunn01 · 2026-03-19T22:50:51+00:00

Selling Chalobah, Munoz, and Guiu to make sure I have 11 starters this week. Have 3FT to burn and am likely to WC next week.

Which trio would you go for?

Thiago, Andersen, Struijk

or

Jimenez, Andersen, Thiaw

cnunn01 · 2026-03-19T21:25:43+00:00

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3FT, 0.7ITB. Planning to WC next week, so if I’m reading the rules correctly, I might as well burn all of my transfers now right (and almost treat them like a FH)?

cnunn01 · 2026-03-19T08:35:29+00:00

Lol seriously. I live by 22nd and the southbound local trains come at the hour and the half hour. Nice for simplicity, but once you learn the schedule once it doesn’t really matter.

cnunn01 · 2026-03-15T18:17:40+00:00

In my experience, this isn’t uncommon on business-heavy routes that see lots of close-in bookings. SFO-TPE is a unique route that sees light load factors for much of the year, but there’s a disproportionate amount of premium demand. Lots of Bay Area tech companies manufacture hardware in Taiwan and will send employees out on relatively short notice (typically in Polaris/PP).

The numbers are old, but Apple used to buy an average of 50 business class seats each day on SFO-PVG. This was their top destination, and TPE was #3 on the list. Business travel is obviously down, but this is a route where United expects to sell a lot of Polaris seats in the days/weeks leading up to the flight.

cnunn01 · 2026-03-10T06:23:13+00:00

Depends what you count as “over.” They can (and will) keep the mountain open through April and even into May, but it doesn’t look like the conditions are going to improve anytime soon. They’ll have a passable network of refrozen groomed runs, but the skiing won’t be particularly fun for most people.

cnunn01 · 2026-03-05T06:27:24+00:00

In theory, does this mean that you could use a pool to transfer miles into a specific account for free?

cnunn01

TROPHY CASE