Steve M

I just had the occasion to book an upcoming IAH-HKG-SIN trip. I'm on CO from IAH to HKG (through EWR), then on CX for HKG-SIN. Since CO and CX can't do an interline eticket, this will be sent to me as a paper ticket. The ticket was issued through CO telephone reservations on a single CO published fare to SIN (that is, it's not two fares end-on-end).

I'm able to take advantage of the new rule that allows me to use miles for a BF upgrade, even though the ticket includes non-CO segments. Also, the fare I wanted happend to be a K fare, so I'm not paying extra due to the new BF upgrade rules.

But, here's my question: The agent said that the only way to upgrade paper tickets is to have them issued in the class that was paid for, then use upgrade certificates at the time of check-in. A previous agent had said that it was possible to have paper tickets initially issued in the upgraded class, as long as the upgrades were available at the time of ticketing.

The ticketing agent checked with a supervisor, and it was confirmed that paper certificates are the only option when you have paper tickets. Does anyone know if this is correct?

I don't particularly mind paper certificates, but my hesitation is that if there is a problem with the upgrade reservation, you may not find out about it until you check in for the flight, at which time it may be too late to solve. In the past, I've bought coach e-tickets, upgraded to BF, and had the tickets issued directly into Z class (which would now be R class), and had this displayed on the paper eticket confirmation. This made me very confident that there would be no problems when checking in.