Originally Posted by
Time traveller
You must be one of the lucky ones to get the early award upgrades. I flew on an award Y ticket in March with 2-3 F empty seats. Neither the ticketing agent or the gate agent was willing to process the upgrade as the policy was not official.
This seems mostly to have to do with the way you ask the agent. After many successful cases myself, I told others (w/ Gold status) to try it on short-haul <500-mile segments where there was clearly availability (i.e. plane ended up flying w/ seats open in F, as often happens on DCA-SDF).
"Hey, how are ya, could you add me to the upgrade list when you get a chance?" (+ hand over boarding pass) == successful
"Hi. I have a question. I'm on an award ticket, but I wanted to know if there was any way I could get on the upgrade list..." == unsuccessful
"Hi. I have a question. I'm on an award ticket, but I wanted to know if there was any way I could get on the upgrade list. I know that there's a change coming up where blah blah blah" == unsuccessful
I have a bunch of data points. Not just DCA-SDF-DCA but mostly on that route because it's a good redemption on a last minute Saver award.
You also have to ask the gate agent, not the counter, not the admirals club, not the phone agents. Thankfully it'll all be simpler in a few days.