I should have given more information in my original posting.

My wife and I are both OP silver, and we have had pretty good luck with upgrades, so we want to keep our status. However, when you don't fly on business, making the 25K each year can be a challenge, so we try to use CO for all our flying. The birth will be about the end of August, so I have plenty of time to plan. We have plenty of miles, but don't use them for award travel, since we need to earn miles from each flight to get to 25K, although I suspect we will be making more visits in the future, so I will keep that in mind.

One of the attractions of the H fare is the bonus miles and an even better chance of being upgraded. Another is that I have to use this companion pass, and after I got it I read the fine print and found it was not valid for our recent Fairbanks trip, as that involved a codeshare on Alaska Air. Our prior trips to SAN have usually cost about $335 each, so H fares at $598 plus $99 plus taxes is quite reasonable.