Originally Posted by
am1996
I just pulled up the fare and it says "V FARE BASIS BK FARE TRAVEL"
The fare code, however, starts with either an M or a Q (for the sample one that I just pulled up), so this is an M-up or a Q-up ticket.
I've never looked at it this closely before, as booking through the corporate travel website/agent is merely an option and I usually have my assistant making business travel bookings for me anyway. I just knew that it was a coach fare ticket with, if available, an immediate confirmed first class upgrade.
Anyway, the point here is that this is what I think the OP was asking: the V fare that shows up on his corporate travel website is a coach fare with an immediate confirmed upgrade to first, if available, and has nothing to do with his elite status or lack thereof (like I mentioned earlier, I have the same V fare basis showing up on some legs where it can't book me into first and puts me in coach).
Sounds basically right, but I still suspect that the corporate contract is offering special whatever-UP fares that book into V class inventory rather than A or P as the publicly available whatever-UP fares seem to do. It would be less likely, from what I understand, that the corporate travel site is showing V to eligible elites when booking within their window would give the automatic free upgrade instantly.