Camera Guy - your answer is complex but there.

If I'm one of the CO platinums flying well higher than avarage, I not only buy full fare tickets for days I will fly, I buy full fare tickets for days I might fly.

In the past, again if I'm that higher than average platinum, I might have full fare tickets for three cities on any given day. I would never bother to call the Elite line to upgrade these tickets when there's only a 10 or so percent chance I might use any of them. EUA however gives me three upgrades automatically, effectively blocking out gold elite and silver elite in the 2 and 1 day windows. These are travelers who are loyal and travel extensively on the specific tickets they reserved. They usually planned well in advance to be loyal to CO and take that specific flight. Now that they are closed out by the not intending to fly platinum, the seat will only become available 20 minutes before the flight, where it will go to...again the platinum standing by for an upgrade.

I'm not even debating weather or not this should be the way it should be (Platinums get everything except the crumbs left over.) I am debating that anyone characterize this as anything but a wholesale removal of benefits from Gold and Silver Elites. It is most definitely NOT making things easier for the elite, as the CO propaganda engine want's everyone to believe.

I believe that CO had a superior product. By chosing the cowardly, American Express type model of rewarding the highest tier only by reducing the benefits to the lowest tier, they are doing no one a service. Platinum Elites deserve more real benefits (International upgrades, free Presidents Club, etc.). Not pseudo benefits achieved by breaking their own rules at the expense of the heart of Continental's Gold and Silver Elite customer base.