<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by venk:
An airline can use one of the policies:
1. An upgrade will be given only if that seat can be absolutely guaranteed to not be sold.
2. A certain amount of upgradeable seats are set aside as the cost of OnePass system.
For 1, you cannot give such a guarantee until the last 20 minutes or so before the departure. Since no upgrades can happen in the last 3 days, such a policy which solely concentrates on revenue essentially means no one shoudl get upgrades. An airline can certainly use this policy but airlines like CO are too dishonest to admit it explicitly because their marketing will throw a fit. After all, they need to sucker in more people to continue to fly CO and pony up the HoKeY fares with the hope that they will get an upgrade.
So I am not against the policy of revenue maximization. Just have truth-in-advertising.
Gordon wants to have his pizza and eat it too. Not at my expense.</font>
You do realize that there are many travelers (incl. FTers) who ROUTINELY score HoKeY upgrades. You're making it sound as if its a once-in-a-lifetime event, and that's just not the case.
Granted, there are some routes where upgrades may prove very difficult, but that is par for the course at pretty much every airline.
------------------
Thank you for choosing Continental Airlines, a proud member of the SkyTeam Alliance.