I am an EWR Plat travelling to IAH tomorrow on a U fare.

Of course I have not gotten n EUA yet. Yesterday there were 6 seats in first open on the outbound flight. Today there are 3.

I am beginning to wonder what kind of tricks CO is working behind the scenes.

Would a Gold on a B fare be upgraded at their 5 day window while a Plat on a U gets passed over? Does anyone have any factual information on how this works?

I understand the new rules do take fare class into account very heavily, however, I never understood the rules to allow Golds to be upgraded ahead of Plats. I obviously have no basis for this comment except to think the flight is not loaded with Plats, which is certainly could be. This just seems to be standard these days, regardless of the route.

I know the EWR-IAH route is very difficult to score an upgrade, so maybe 3 Plats ended up ahead of me since they purchase higher faires.

I heard CO claim all of the upgrades are more difficult because of their extremely high load factor, but my Plat status is lmost becoming useless for upgrades. If I weren't held hostage flying out of EWR I would have comped over to another airline by now. This sucks.