Originally Posted by
spin88
As a SFO based CO Plat for 5 years, to echo a few things folks said:
(1) upgrades are hard to get to IAH, to EWR, forget about it unless you get a full Y, and then only if you do it way ahead of time. it used to be easy when they flew 757s with 24 seats, now its 738s with 14 seats (used to be 18 but they took out seats, now a few planes are back to 18).
Actually, as it was pointed out by someone else, they've added seats. The issue at hand is currently they have a mix of 16 seat and 20 seat 738s flying the transcons. The new 739ERs are all equipped with 20 seats and are slated for exclusive transcon flying. The only reason they aren't doing transcon at the moment is that they have no IFE and are awaiting the LiveTV installation.
Originally Posted by
spin88
(2) They don't end up covering the US by themselves well. IAH is fine for the South, but EWR is a bad place to change planes. CLE is a joke and now only has one SFO flight a day. I ended up taking NW about half of the time. This used to work, and I got upgraded about 90% of the time, then 80% and it kept slipping.
As with any airline, it's generally about the route. In the last five years, I don't think i've missed a single upgrade on NW.
Originally Posted by
spin88
(4) there is no such thing as a CO redemption, unless you get the double cost (200K for BF overseas) reward. Folks gripe about MP fliltering, but the redemptions are far better.
This hasn't been my experience at all. I've always been able to get an award, 90% of the time a Saver Award with relative ease. I just recently scored a 100k award on VS for LAX-LHR and back. I've had far more challenges trying to get an award on UA lately then I've had on CO.
Originally Posted by
spin88
(5) and my pet peave was always that CO would not slot me in ahead of the ma and pa kettles on a flight. Many times I would arrive at EWR or IAH to find my flight to SFO delayed, go to the earlier flight get added to the weight list and find a bunch of ma and pa kettles getting on while I got to wait for my two hour delayed flight. Power to the Ma and Pa kettles, and for them its a good deal, not such a good deal for me, who paid 4 times as much for my ticket.
As it was posted, as of earlier this year, this has been fixed. Additionally, CO rolled out an awesome new PDA site where you can watch where you stand live
here. This also works for watching where you are on the upgrade list.
Originally Posted by
spin88
(6) CO has little redundency. While flights are far more likely to go (less cancllations, mechanicals due to new planes) if something happens you are toast. UA with its wider network (DEN, ORD, IAD, LAX) hubs has always gottem me where I need to go, although its ugly at times.
While I agree this could be an issue, i couldn't tell you the last time i've had a mechanical cancellation. Delays, definitely, but the last cancellation I had was in March of 2007 due to ice storms and really, no one was flying that day.
It was sad, for a while when I was doing a combination of SFO-EWR flights on CO and SFO-SAN on UA, for about three months, more often then not, it was faster for me to get to EWR then SAN door to door. UA just couldn't keep their act together and the fact that I could get to the other side of the country in less time then get down the coast was quite an embarrasment.
Originally Posted by
grayland
Interesting thread as many of us are considering the switch.
How exactly does the "comp" upgrade work? Do you request it or just wait for the lightning to strike at the gate?
It's all automatic. The only exception is if you are on a full Y fare, then you just pull up your res on the website and click the little 'Upgrade' button. But aside from that, the EUA (Elite Upgrade Automation) program starts running five days out (Platinum Window) and if there are upgrade seats available, starts upgrading based on fare, time of purchase and status.