speedbird9

Hi everyone.

I am kinda a newbie to all this. I was hoping you could help me with some questions.

I would like to fly to London from EWR on either 23 or 24 OCT. I would like to buy an L fare $600RT and just upgrade outbound leg to BF.

What are my chances?

How does it work? Can I get instant confirmation of the upgrade if its available. There are two off us travelling. I can see spending the 4K right now.

Thanks for any help or advice.

Phil.

Lurker1999

Wirelessly posted (Treo 650: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/Palm-D060; Blazer/4.5) 16;320x320)

First read the forum FAQ sticky for general BF upgrade tips. You should be able to just upgrade outbound if there is space available. Have you called already to ask or are you just asking in theory? Also I assume you have some type of elite status with CO as you can't waitlist for BF upgrades otherwise..

speedbird9

No I don't have status with CO. Does that mean I cannot upgrade a ticket with miles?

rkkwan

You can use miles to upgrade.

And in fact, according to co.com, you can waitlist for BF upgrades even without status. The "elite-only" rules for waitlisting only applies to Series 0 (i.e. domestic) mileage upgrades.

http://www.continental.com/web/en-US...e/default.aspx

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Anyways, I don't know about your chance. If you have two possible dates, call CO first to find out if any of those dates have upgrades available immediately.

But either way, just book your flights, and then call to have yourself put into the upgrade waitlist. Miles will be deducted immediately. If the waitlist clears, your credit card will be charged for the upgrade fees. If they waitlist doesn't clear, you get your miles back.

mbreuer

You can if there is availability. You'll have to pay $$ + miles to upgrade. I don't believe you can waitlist unless you have status.

Airplanefanatic

I am kind of in the same boat. I am waiting on a BF mileage upgrade back from CDG, already upgraded on the way out to Gatwick. I just called and they told me what days and flights would give me the best availability/chances.

Also there are also two of us flying. What happens if only one seat is released? Do they give that seat to someone lower on the waitlist or do they hold it in case two become available?

Thanks

ijgordon

If you are booked in the same reservation, then they will only upgrade you together. Unfortunately, I think this means they may pass over you if only one seat is released and there's someone behind you on the waitlist who only needs one.
If you are on different reservations, I think you may be able to set it up so you get the "all or none" or the "one at a time" which means you could be split up. To get the all or none they would link the reservations (PNRs).

In any circumstance, I doubt that they would "hold" the one seat that was released in the hope that another becomes available.

One thing to note -- the waitlist is prioritized by elite status and then time of request. So any elites who requested an upgrade will have a higher priority than you. That said, with the high co-pays I don't think there are usually all that many people on the upgrade waitlist for a particular flight.