Just have a quick question for those of you who might have some experience with this:

Can you upgrade to Envoy at booking using miles (subject to availability), then at 7 days out from the flight swap from using miles to using a CP upgrade cert if they still have the appropriate class open? Theoretically, just by giving back your miles-upgraded seat availability should open for you to use your upgrade cert. This sounds too good to be true, but one can always hope... ;)

I know you can cancel award tickets and get the miles back, just not sure on upgrades using miles.

I apologize in advance if this has been asked and answered.

Thanks!

Sean

I'd guess you'd have to get downgraded back to Coach and then re-upgraded to Envoy. That should be possible, if (1) there are seats available in Coach and (2) if Envoy seats are available for CP certificate upgrades.

Ingenious concept. The upgrades come from the same fare bucket so, logically, it should work. It may well depend upon the load of the flight whether the seat goes back into upgrade inventory.

I do know that last year I had two international Envoy tickets booked and then I had to cancel the trip. I asked the agent if the seats went back into inventory as bookable free/upgrade seats. She wasn't sure so she looked and there was, indeed, two seats available for booking. That was months in advance; I'm not sure if the same would automatically happen inside of 7 days.

If you have sufficient miles, you could test it by booking a mileage (saver level) Envoy ticket to anywhere they have a seat available (ideally only a single seat), say a week or two from now. Then, at 7 days out, call in to check on availability to upgrade using a CP certificate. If they say no, then cancel your reservation. Once cancelled, ask the agent to look and see if that opened up a seat in the upgrade bucket.

Interesting dilemma. I'd say go for it -- so you can let us all know how it goes! :)