[QUOTE=Fermat]
and your vague generalization about "many many people" upgrading "on most every flt" isn't dumb?
No because many many people do get advance upgrades and many many more get them at the gate...but I think the general terms of upgrades are "space available" and sometimes that's not known until flt time.
You miss my point - if AC doesn't want to allow their passengers to confirm an upgrade in advance, why issue upgrade certificates at all? They have passenger lists.
I didn't misss your point at all; for instance if you had been booked on 868 this am you would have gotten your upgrade in advance at your 'window" as it was still showing I6 at 7am today. The HKG flt was not and was oversold. And BTW there were upgrade stdby pax for 868 even with the flt having been wide open all week an none for the HKG flt.
They have passenger status lists. If they're going to block all J seats and dole upgrades out at the gate, then why have paper? It's entirely irrelevant
see above.
All the paper does is give the customer a false sense that they can purchase an eligible fare class ticket and confirm an upgrade in advance... but you can't when AC is zeroing out the class bucket. That sounds like bait and switch to me.
Ac does NOT zero out the I class bucket per se;the yield management system does it and that's what needs adjusting. Don't forget that AC ony introduced I class less than six months ago and in typical AC style they proably did not have their data base quite set up to monitor it.