As a former Platinum on Continental, now ExPlat on American, I am surprised at the "surprise" expressed in this thread. It has seemed to me that virtually every decision taken by Continental over the past 3 years has been oriented towards rewarding the higher fare passenger over the loyal, but perhaps lower marginal revenue, traveler. The selection expressed in this thread seems a natural extension of what has already happened. If Delta had not abandoned it, the next step would have been to eliminate the lower fare categories from being upgradeable. Unfortunately, they have chosen to punish the leisure traveler with the EQM bias, etc, which led to my migration to AA.