Hello all,

I've spent two days reading back 6 months in this forum, and just did a search hoping to find some better answers to my questions but no dice. Hope some more experienced flyers can help me out.

I travel all over for business and have been pretty loyal to CO and Star Alliance. Just missed Silver last year (not loyal enough, I guess!), but look to make it this year by end of May. I fly mostly in Asia, being based in Tokyo, but have had to fly to the US (LAX or EWR) 4 times since last November alone.

I have another meeting in NY in May and booked my round trip on CO last week only to notice the return CO9 on May 7 was practically booked solid in Economy and I had to take a middle seat (eek!). I decided if ever I needed an upgrade it was on a 14hr flight after a long week of meetings.

My ticket is an H. I used CO.com and "upgrade this flight"; choosing my return leg (the CO9 on May 7 EWR - NRT), paying $350 and 25,000 miles. As I mentioned I do not have an elite status yet, and since nothing was available for immediate upgrade, I am now on the waitlist.

Question 1: Anyone here know my chances for upgrade seeing as I'm not an elite, but I paid with miles & $?

Question 2: I had a question and contacted CS via CO.com. In their response the representative included this sentence: "You are currently on the priority first class waitlist." I didn't know there were levels of waitlist. Or is this just a nice way to confirm I'm waitlisted?

Question 3: I couldn't find this information on CO.com, but if I do get upgraded, do I still earn miles, or not? (I hope I still earn them as I would finally make Silver after this trip!)

Thanks for any advice!
Bonnie