Originally Posted by
ysslah
I tried jumping on UAL few months ago. My wife made it on. Then I was the only one left on the stand by list with one business class seat open. The flight left without me. One of the pilots even came back up to see if they can do anything, but the gate couldn’t figure out how to put me in a business class seat.
Until very recently there was no option for 'upgrading' a jumpseater to Business Class. It did change recently though allowing the captain the authority to permit a jumpseater to occupy any available cabin/class seat in the cabin (with coordination of the lead flight attendant).
The change was in the Sept 8 FOM revision.