Does anyone know what UAL's policy is for upgrading revenue pax to business or first class on an international flight that is oversold in coach?
For that matter, I am interested in knowing what the policies are for all carriers...

For example, I am looking at a SFO-FRA flight with some 30 overbookings in coach, 3 open in business and 7 open in first. I am the only nonrev listed (1st class obviously ) but I am wondering what would happen if they end up with say, an oversold situation of 10 revenue pax in coach. What would end up happening? Would they upgrade folks from coach to business, and then some business guys to first (obviously granting the free upgrade to frequent flier guys) thereby filling up all of "my" first class seats ?

Or would they offer compensation to other coach pax to take a later flight ? Or simply displace the extra coach pax (without compensation) and put them on a later flight (there are 2 later flight, one code-shared with LH and another UAL flight) ??

I'm curious as to what various different airlines would do in a similar case. My experience with a foreign legacy carrier that used to have a 3-class cabin was to do exacly what I listed in the first scenario, but I'm wondering if US carriers do things any different.

What I have noticed is that in cases where less than a week before departure there is a strong demand for coach seats but little demand for business (ie. coach already at or near the max overbook, while business well below capacity), Delta sometimes caps the number of business seats for sale well below capacity and authorizes the overbooking of coach seats well beyond the projected no-show factor (in the amount equal to the margin of seats avail in business). This leads me to assume they would be willing to upgrade coach pax to business if there aren't enough noshows.

Thanks for your answers.