Here are the three main things I use it for:

Say there are 5 flights that day, and I want to upgrade, I do a flight search, see the times, and I can see that the 4pm flight has R1, and the other 4 flights are R0. I book the flight with R1, and apply my upgrade certificate. This is especially important with international where upgradeable fares cost more. Why pay extra if I can't upgrade it?

Also, the day before the flight, if its one I didn't want to upgrade in advance, but might want to upgrade now, I look. If I see F9 I wait it out. If I see F2 and R1, I might use a certificate or pay the buy-up price to assure F.

The other part I like was I would use it to look for saver awards. If I am booked a paid trip and the price is a little steep, and I see Saved F or Saver C, Ill just use my miles instead.


I feel blind now, very sad. I wonder if they are trying to prevent people form booking and upgrading immediately so they can sell even more buy ups. It also makes it hard to search for saver awards. I pay an annual fee to KVS so I can search fro saver awards, and that functionality seems to be gone now.