Introduction – Finding PlusPoints Upgrade Space
United Platinum and 1K elite members receive PlusPoints upon reaching status each year. PlusPoints enables you to purchase an economy ticket and apply your PlusPoints benefit to try and get upgraded to First Class (Domestic), Polaris (International Business Class), or Premium Plus (International Premium Economy).
Upgrading with PlusPoints varies in cost by the type of ticket you purchase and what cabin you want to upgrade to. This ranges from 10 to 80 PlusPoints per flight direction.
While PlusPoints is a nice perk, finding flights with confirmable PlusPoints upgrade space is a common frustration. You often apply PlusPoints to your reservation and are left waitlisted until just days before departure or even until the boarding process begins to see if you scored an upgrade.
If you do not receive an upgrade on your flight, PlusPoints expire, and United elite members often are left with unused PlusPoints.
Luckily, there is a new solution to find instantly confirmable United PlusPoints upgrades.
Find PlusPoints Upgrade Space Easily
Seats.aero offers a United PlusPoints Finder tool. This PlusPoints locator displays all future United flights with PlusPoints inventory. The page indicates flight details, including departure date, flight number, origin, destination, and number of PlusPoints upgrade seats available. While not all features of Seats.aero requires a subscription, the United PlusPoints Upgrade space finder does ($9.99 per month).
At the top of the United PlusPoints finder are several filter options. First, you can filter the page by available fare class. PZ is the fare class filter most travelers will want to select for finding PlusPoints first or business class upgrade space. However, if you are one of United’s top-tier Global Services members, you can change the filter to the PN fare class. PN upgrade space is more widely available than PZ but only bookable by those with Global Services status.
If you are only interested in using PlusPoints to upgrade to Premium Plus (International Premium Economy) select RN as the fare class filter.
In addition to the fare class, you can filter using the search bar. For example, enter your origin airport code to see all PlusPoints upgrades available. You could also add search criteria such as a specific flight number, month, or date.
Approach To Finding Instantly Confirmable PlusPoints Upgrades
Using the United PlusPoints locator allows you to find all instantly confirmable PlusPoints upgrade space without manually searching. If you have a PlusPoints balance you are looking to use; I would approach searching for PlusPoints upgrade space in one of two ways:
Approach 1: If you have a specific destination in mind, enter the relevant airport codes into the search filter. This will display all the dates you could fly to your destination. If nothing meets your needs, periodically come back and search again. United changes its PlusPoints upgrade space daily. Using this approach certainly beats manually searching various dates on United’s website.
Approach 2: Some fliers just want to travel in business class rather than economy and do not have a specific destination in mind. Under this approach, I would search your origin airport code and the month(s) you are willing to travel. This will give you all the instantly confirmable PlusPoints upgrade inventory. For example, you may want to travel from Chicago to somewhere in Europe in August on Polaris business class. After typing in ORD and 2023-08, I see Polaris PlusPoints upgrade space from London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Munich.
Booking Confirmable PlusPoints Upgrades on United
If you find something you are ready to book, click the blue View on United button, and you will be taken to Untied’s website. Here, you can confirm the PlusPoints upgrade inventory is available and proceed with your booking. Occasionally, the integration might be delayed, and the PlusPoints inventory may no longer be available. So, always double-check United’s site to ensure you do not see phantom upgrade space.
While Seats.aero requires a subscription, you could use this tool to find your ideal flight and cancel your subscription. Paying for one month certainly outweighs the time you might otherwise spend trying to find Polaris PlusPoints upgrade space manually.
Seats.aero offers several other great award flight tools that may cause you to want to keep the subscription, such as finding Lufthansa First Class Award Space.
Finding Instantly Confirmable PlusPoints Upgrade Space – The Pilot Debrief
United frequent-fliers often need help finding and using PlusPoints to confirm upgrades, especially for Polaris Business Class. With Seats.aero, finding PlusPoints upgrade space is instantaneous without repetitive manual searching.
I recommend finding PlusPoints space first and then planning your trip around that. This will allow you to avoid the hassle of the PlusPoints waitlist process or, even worse, letting your PlusPoints expire unused.
I hope you have learned how to find confirmable PlusPoints upgrades, and if you take a United Polaris flight shortly, enjoy the new Therabody Amenity Kits. Leave a comment below if you have any thoughts or questions!
