yellow77

CLE-IAH is an extremely tough upgrade (my partner, CO Plat, is about 50% on deep discount fares but at far off-peak times (Wednesday 8:30pm, Sunday 8:30am), and I have never seen a CLE-IAH upgrade as Gold at any time (around 20 segments in the last two years, almost all off-peak)). Apart from that, upgrades out of CLE seem reasonably plentiful. (But not for me, since my main route is ROC-CLE-IAH, and ROC-CLE is an ERJ and CLE-IAH is as above.)

We stick with CO because there are a few good seats in CO Y and we usually get them, plus, yes, CO Y isn't that bad (it's clean), the PC is nice, and the flights out of CLE have a decent on-time record. (The problem is when the aircraft is routed through EWR on an earlier flight before reaching CLE, which you won't run into so much at PIT since different aircraft operate PIT-EWR and PIT-CLE.)