BB, I also had 100% luck on upgrades when AC was selling the certificates for points. One of the reasons I switched to CP was the way AC handled dropping that, they just stopped one day and six weeks later the statement came that they had abandoned it. Luckily I read about it in Douglas McArthur's column in the Globe and got one last set. Which I probably won't use now (my Ottawa-based friends in Long Beach will probably make good use of them, but of course come February I'll offer them here!).

What really upset me was that they could have solved the problem, while also getting points off their books, but doubling or tripling the price of the certificates. They were 28000pt/8 (2 to upgrade Elite YOW-LAX, and only 1 to upgrade SE YOW-LAX!). That's $105 worth of points for an at-time-of-booking upgrade for SE! No wonder they were popular. But I still got 100% with my 72hour advance.

On another subject mentioned, my guess is that next year SE will have 96 hours to book in advance. I understand that last year was 72/48h (for SE/E) and they went to anytime/72h. Meanwhile CP is 100h/72h, which makes more sense from a business POV (although I'd prefer AC's if I were SE).

andrew