MRJ1964:
I'm surprised to hear that NW is the exact opposite of CO on boarding. CO encourges everyone to board at the earliest opportunity. If I am on the waitlist for an upgrade and it clears, they come to my seat and bring me up to first class. This has happened numerous times to both myself and my wife (also Plat elite) and it works very nicely. The big advantage, obviously, is that one does not lose access to carry on storage space in the overheads by waiting in the waiting area to see if the upgrade cleared. I can board first with my status and be assured that if F/C opens up, they WILL come for me. I have confidence in this system. Now, if they could only get their EUA autoupgrade system to work reliably, which I have no conficence in......