Originally Posted by
IAH-OIL-TRASH
Pessimist. I view it as 2 steps forward, 1 step back.
Maybe we'll get a "Friday Announcement" from UA Insider.
It's a fair statement; I'm more pessimistic than I am optimistic about this development.
I have been fortunate in the past to get the LH upgrade simply because there were a couple of seats left over; and as annoying as the paper certificates were, it at least allowed me to get up front.
I really do not believe that having the 10 hour cutoff is going to result in a better outcome for those of us who play the LH GPU roulette. I do not know how tightly LH's IM controls those upgrade seats, but I prefer to have a fighting chance all the way till the door closes before giving up (yes, I know you have to be at least 90+ minutes or so technically). This simply prevents that from happening.
I guess part of the pessimism is driven by overall experience from the industry where most of the stuff we have encountered have been cutbacks or marginalization of the benefits.
The 10 hour cutoff just appears to be another way to prevent the upgrade certificate from being used fully. It's like the recent update they did where it required name and specific flight to be printed on the LH certificate, just more restrictions one after another.
It wouldn't be as bad, and in fact, a vast improvement, if they somehow allowed the upgrade to be applicable up to the time of departure. If they can allow you to access the web to apply the upgrade, why not allow a print out of the certificate so that it's deducted from your account, and you have direct control over the certificate to present at the airport. Allow it to expire within x days/hours. It's still highly antiquated considering the available real-time inventory.