<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Academic:
The best way to get one is to have no status with AC, choose a flight that is likely to be overbooked, and make sure that you don't have seat assignment before you arrive at the airport 
. If you look at a couple of the recent threads around here, you'll see that the official guidelines say that you should be upgraded in order of AP status, regardless of whether you originally had a seat, but that doesn't happen all the time. </font>
After a short hiatas from flying on AC over the last few months, while I changed jobs, employers and home airports (YVR-YYJ) and started to fly a dozen monthly floatplane round trips instead of *A biz-trips & MRs on big pressurised aircraft, I returned to the AC today for a flight from YVR to YYC.
I didn't ask for an upgrade at either check in or at the lounge since I was pretty sure that that my webfare wasn't eligible; I did approach the GA and asked politely "I don't know if this upgradeable, could you please check?" as I handed her my boarding pass and an Elite NA cert. She quickly typed a few key strokes and replied "No, sorry it's not" immediately followed by "Wait a minute & leave it with me, I've had a change of aircraft and have to shuffle some seat assignments & I might be able to do something." Fifteen minutes later, just after boarding was started, I was paged to the gate and given a J class boarding pass for 6K, a crew rest full recline seat on 767-300. Against the grain, and some recent FTer experiences, I got an OP UG exactly when you'd hope your status might count. If this is a sign of things to come, excellent. If this was a one time anomaly, too bad, but thank you to the angel who handled my flight today.
mpc1
edited for typo
[This message has been edited by mpc1 (edited 07-12-2003).]