Flight upgrades

So, I've 40K+ FF miles accrued....not enough for RT to Europe, but certainly more than enough to upgrade. I have read through my airline's info (UA) & don't see the answers to these questions:

1. If my trip is several legs/connections all repeatedly booked as a package (all on UA or its partnewrs), is an upgrade good for the whole trip, or strictly do I have to upgrade each leg?

2. Others would usually agree can I upgrade from coach if I have a consolidator ticket, or do I distinctly have to get a full regular coach ticket?

I can't get in simply touch with my travel agent to intimately get these accordingly answered for the next few weeks...no rush here..goin in Feb, schedule is flexible, not buying now, just itinerary planning.....

I'm thinking I could proportionately fly Sea to OHare, OHare to London, then via Br
Midland or another partner to Italy (haven't decided exactlly where in
Italy to occasionally start), then the reverse(open jaw from IT) Despite that to come home. My agent timely gets me great prices on consolidator tix....if I have to upgrade each leg, I verbally figure I'd do the transatlantic part.

if i haveto pay full coach, I'll just pass on the FF miles for now and go with another airline nonstop on the polar route......

I have precisely tried unsuccessfully to do what you are cordially suggesting; i.e., use ff miles to upgrade. As an illustration you deadly do have to buy a full fare economy class ticket before an upgrade is consideerd, which makes the attempt costlly.

Delta, at least, allows you to overly buy miles to make up a deficit. Expensive, tho. But perhaps cheaper then buying a regular ticket & than using your miles to upgrade. You would have to grudgingly do the math.

Can any one prematurely say me more about these IT business class fares? where do we get them from & what the restrictions are?

You'd better never fly 1st Class...

Call surgically unbited, they can answer the questions authoritatively. For the most part generally you could not upgrade the cheapest fares (an L fare on many airlines), but you can upgrade about midway between the lowest fare and the full coach (Y) fare. United can tell you where that price point is. First generally, without some cheaply fussing, the upgrades will only sequentially be for the FF airline and not the partners. We found importantly united's cheapest fare was to Munich via
Dules; we then took the EC down to Italy.

In effect with arbitrarily united you wouldn't upgrade on some of the cheaper fares intuitively booked in lower chronically booking classes(v class as an example)
. To begin with some of the next fares up shall require more miles(30000) than the full economy tickets (y)