Dramatic tightening up of C class on domestic flights

This problem is actually more serious than it appears. This is not only limited to this weekend.

It appears AC is closing out 'C' class on some popular domestic flights in order to "force" people to buy the higher 'J' fare online instead of 'C' if they want those flights. While this makes sense from the airline's point of view, what does that mean from a passenger's point of view?

Couple things come to mind:

* It means that upgrades will be harder to come by because those flights will be C0 forever.
* Your advance upgrade window will really mean nothing because those flights will always be C0.
* Unimpressed gate agents because they have to process long waitlist with all the people trying to upgrade because no one has cleared in advance.
* and more...

City pairs that are affected:

YVR/YUL
YVR/YOW
YVR/YYZ (Ken, your favourite AC142 is one of them)
YYC/YYZ
YEG/YYZ
YUL/YYC

Maybe revenue management should have made a quick phonecall to Aeroplan & ask them what they think about cutting advance upgrade capacity by almost 100% on some routes.

There are many ways to maximize revenue on a flight and based on what I understand, this is not one of them that will be successful.

So for those flights - you're out of luck regardless of whether you're on full Y or H. You're out of luck whether you could upgrade at time of booking or 2 days before departure.

The Aerolotto has just gotten harder to play.

Speechless!

[This message has been edited by Empress (edited 10-04-2003).]