Originally Posted by OPFlyer
I don't remember this being mentioned.
Quote:
OnePass members traveling on Y, H, K, M, N and B (or equivalent) fares are eligible for mileage-deduct upgrades within or between the 48 contiguous U.S., Alaska and Canada.
OnePass members traveling on Continental may upgrade in discount fares listed on the chart below with the applicable copay. If for any reason the upgrade is not completed, the service fee will be refunded in conjunction with the redeposit of the miles used to upgrade.
Fare Class Miles Copay (Elites) Copay (All Others)
Y 5,000 $0 $0
H/K/M/N/B 15,000 $0 $0
O/V/U/Q 15,000 $0 $50
I/S/W 15,000 $0 $100
T/X/L 15,000 $0 $150
Hi Everyone, this past week, we made a couple changes to our OnePass mileage upgrade policies - all with the intention to make them easier to use.
- Domestic upgrades available for all members and all published fares. Previously, customers who weren’t Elite members could only use miles to upgrade a domestic itinerary when booked in select fare classes (which excluded O, V, U, Q, I, S, W, T, X and L). Now, our domestic upgrade reward (Series 0) allows upgrades to be redeemed in conjunction with all published fare classes. The fare classes that were previously excluded will simply have an upgrade service fee ranging from $50 to $150 depending on the fare class. And yes, Elite members will continue to be able to redeem Series 0 rewards without upgrade service fees. The full details are now posted at continental.com.
- The H class upgrade copay for Hawaii is now $100, not $200. It’s a minor change, but nonetheless it’s for the good. Effective Nov. 15th, the H Class upgrade service fee for Hawaii BusinessFirst upgrades will be lowered to $100, making it consistent with our $100 H class copay for all other BusinessFirst upgrade rewards.
Originally Posted by
craz
why do I have the feeling that day of flight CO will 1st check to see if theres anyone on the waitlist before handing out any EUAs or Airport Upgrades to Elites. why would they give an Elite even a Plat on an ElCheapo a free UP when theres someone willing to part with 15k in miles and $150,
if you thought getting that UP was hard till now, we havent seen anything yet
You’re right
craz, when it comes to First Class, our goal is to fill it with fare-paying customers. This includes customers willing to pay with mileage rewards. The concern is a fair one, but it won’t happen very often. If our BusinessFirst and Latin America/Caribbean (Series 1) waitlist volumes are any indication, the number of customers waitlisting for domestic Series 0 upgrades will hardly be noticeable. Most of the time, we’ll see this when a customer was able to confirm the upgrade on one leg of a connection but not the other. In these cases especially, we believe allowing the waitlist (and subsequent airport standby) for the upgrade is the right thing to do.
Originally Posted by sbm12
That being said, the verbiage that says only elites may waitlist for Series 0 rewards remains, so it seems that this will not affect folks at the airport since non-elites can't waitlist. Then again, the fact that there is a mention of refunding the fee if the upgrade doesn't complete suggests that this may be changing.
Hi
sbm12, as mentioned above, we'll be removing the waitlist and airport standby restrictions from all of our upgrade rewards. This was already the case for everything except for customers without Elite status redeeming domestic Series 0 rewards. In these cases, we found that denying the waitlist didn’t really have a bearing on behavior. It just made things harder for all of us. Customers would still continually poll continental.com and/or call us until the seats were available.
We’ll be updating continental.com to reflect the waitlist policy and the upgrade copay refundability before the end of the week.