<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by NJDavid:
If I were to pay $1200+ on a flight with no notice, you'd bet I wouldn't give a rats a** who I was flying with. Give me the best seat available on the most direct route at the best time. You'd bet that almost any corp travel group or agent worth their sort can get the upgrade from a full fare Y ticket, forget status.
The folks that loyalty marketing schemes are supposed to court are the folks planning to move their business to one airline or another - and the key word here is planning. These are the people who consciously decide to fly one airline or another. And from all I have seen, Co has done a terrific job of alienating them for quite a while.</font>
But doesn't this somewhat reinforce what I'm saying? CO is a business and wants the opportunity to book high-rev full-Y fares. By leaving those seats in A, it allows the your travel agent to say, "well if you fly on CO I can get you in FC." Rather than say "hmmm... NYC to LAX, let's see, CO has no FC seats left at all, but if you fly on UA I can get you a coach seat and then upgrade it to FC."
I think there is truth in what I'm saying...
Although, I do think it is unreasonable to horde 16 seats on a 757 in A... there should be some balance...