Originally Posted by jtalstad
Here's a real secret for upgrades which I just discovered: fly on the weekends! (I shouldn't have told anyone; forget I said that.) Here's another secret which I had been formulating: buy refundable only and, if no joy two days out, cancel and fly other metal.
I'm sure this works well for you but I have flown a lot of weekend and remain 1 of 26 as OP Gold.
More basically, I am very tired of what is for me a ridiculous game. I need to travel because I need to get somewhere when I need to get there and as affordably as possible.
I won't consider buying a refundable ticket just because I have an outside chance at an upgrade. I run my own small business and I'm not interested in spending that kind of money (one of the great attractions of the upgrade feature used to be that I could reasonably expect an upgrade flying on inexpensive fares).
Also, I won't book myself to fly on Saturday when I really need to go on Tuesday. What am I supposed to do Wed, Thur, Fri? Just sit around in a hotel room?
As I stated in an earlier post I don't expect upgrades, they are just perks. But I do need a more comfortable and spacious coach seat (even if only ever so slightly so) and CO just doesn't have that.
That's why I'm flying a lot of jetBlue and non-CO SkyTeam Alliance, and others. So far this year I've traveled on B6, NW, DL, US, WN, AC, UA and TZ. The only coach seat that I have found equals CO for lack of comfort is UA E- (although UA E+ is terrific and CO, of course, does not have this section in their coach).
The real problem is that CO has the least comfortable, most cramped coach cabin in America so that, if you're over 5'10" or so flying CO in coach over long distances is really phyiscally challenging.