Originally Posted by
victor8
I am CO plat with just under 80 K flight miles for the year. I am in a middle of a trip, IAH to BUF routed through CLE.
On the outbound flight I patiently waited to be upgraded, 17 seat available in a 20 seat cabin. 5 days ahead no upgrade, 3 days no upgrade, called Elite Priorty desk no help but they did say there should be no problem as there were at least 12 seats still available.
24 hours adead of the flight no upgrade, I fianlly checked in and see I am 16 on the list for comp upgrade to F. I figured why not suck it up and pay the miles get into F because ther must have been at least 15 Plats on the flight too.
Continental started tracking F/Y-fare buying patterns a while ago and seem to hold the F inventory open for flights where there is a high percentage of paid-F and paid-Y. I fly in and out of LGA a lot, and I rarely ever see an upgrade 5 days out on a discounted fare. The last couple of weeks flying on deeply discounted fares, I haven't even cracked the top-10 on the UG list fighting for one open seat. I suspect your BUF flight may be similar. Calling the Elite desk won't help you out. It's easier to check the website to see what seats are open and that may give you a clue about who's getting upgraded a lot better than listening to someone who might not be paying strictest attention to what's going on (e.g., was he #32 on his connecting flight, and misremembered which flight he was checking?).