Hi Y'all,

I "bought" 3 Air France Concorde award tickets in January (for an April departure) for 200,000 miles each.

After the 3 day "give AF a chance to respond to your request", I called in and learned all flights were confirmed on the requesteddates. AF confirmed 3 seats on their most prestigious flights as well as Business class on European connecting flights. CO gave me 1st on DFW-IAH. IAH-EWR-IAH-DFW were waitlisted (as well as Mom's ABQ-IAH-EWR-IAH-ABQ legs).

The waitlists never cleared. As the 5 day Platinum elite upgrade window came up, I noticed ITN still had "F" seats (elite upgrades) avail but "E" seats (1st class awards) stayed at zero. As different elite upgrade windos came along, I watched F decrease down to zero. So eilte were getting complimentary upgrades ahead of the person (and I'm a Plat) who "paid" something for the seats.

On check-in at DFW was given 2 upgrades on the IAH-EWR leg (on a 777 !!!). This required a "red-coat" and about 25 minutes to accomplish. At IAH met up with Mom and tried getting the 3rd seat upgraded. Gate desk snottily (I felt like I was back at AA) replied that 1st was full. During boarding I watched as 5 folks were given "on-board" upgrades.

Attempts to upgrade the return flights both at the ticket counter and both gate counters received the standard reply of "these are award tickets and we can't upgrade them, if you wanted 1st class you should've cashed in 1st class miles" !!!!

So I say "no" to both questions. Travel was on April 6 and 14 so was after the corrections to the recent 3 hour enhancement.

The Concorde was simply fantastic

Steve