tph4,

I have successfully redeemed upgrade rewards for 40K on VS several times now. But, I agree it's too tough with the new rules. Who can take a gamble that they pay 2-5X the lowest price ticket NOW, for just a CHANCE to upgrade down the road at thirty days out. Nobody with any brains. CO's policies on international upgrades are very convoluted and completely not user friendly. And, there is no difference being an elite member or not with upgrades - you're screwed either way.

So, the best course if you have the miles, and especially if you're platinum, is just to redeem them. Platinums have a bucket with very good availability (I just snagged a VS RT for 2 pax for this July for 100K per pax), and while availability for non-platinums is poor in the summer, its decent in the off season, and hit or miss in swing.

It seems completely crazy to me that CO won't take my $2,200 in revenue and 40K and let me upgarde, but they will take 100K and $87 for taxes. That's just not good business sense for them - at least not in my opinion.

If I didn't have miles to burn, I would just do several cheap-o transcons to get the extra 60K miles needed. As a plat, I could do some SFO-Florida runs through EWR for $150-200 per ticket (gosh, or $114 to JAX recently, or $99 to CMH) and just spend say 5 x 150 = $750. So, CO makes an extra $750 from me, and they have to fly my a** across the country five times and let me eat, drink and consume FC seats instead of their business passengers...and they forego the $2,200 I would spend on just buying the midweek SFO LHR ticket on CO/VS. That's plain crazy.

But if that's the game CO wants us to play, bring it on. To the extent I don't have time to do those 5 runs, I'll give my business to American or US Air or whoever (and, I just purchased $7,000 worth of SFO LGW summer tickets on US Air...). But for now, I have miles on CO banked and as a plat, I'll just burn them at 100K reward level if CO doesn't want my $2,200.