Difficulty to u/g to PY
 

after digesting the rules, I bought a Comfort Class ticket for domestic travel and then tried to u/g to Premium Econ. I am a SE. What a nightmare.

PY u/g book into N class which is also a revenue class. Even though showing avail you get wait-listed unless you call in. Then be prepared for a 10 minute hold while the agent speaks to someone else to resolve. It is not always easy to resolve.
On one flight, despite availability showing, I had to u/g to J which cost me far more miles than PY. Very disappointing service as I wanted to save my few remaining e-ups.

Anecdotally, upgrades to PY are not fully "understood" here... some have said N=2 is the magic number, and some have noted a special N basis or something on those lines... (I'm sure cow has taken a look for the basis on the SV site)

What was N showing on the flights in question? Was it N low or something like O9E9N9? What was Y like? Did Y look oversold?

Upgrading into N is different than upgrades being based on the availability of N.

If you saw the latter and convinced an agent to upgrade you, then you manipulated an agent into doing something they shouldn't have.

Totally disagree with you... Yes I pressured agents into doing what AC policy is but I should have to do this... . N is the u/g code but AC is playing games. According to their own statements, N is u/g able from Comfort 21 days in advance on domestic....NOT TRUE till you pressure them and that I did.

AC has a problem here and those of us who are loyal also have a problem here.
100K

On what are you basing this? Latitude/flexible PY being upgradeable to business class based on R or Z/P (depending on whether dom/TB or international) is clearly spelled out on the website.

I've just had a look through the eUp pages and some of the Comfort fare stuff and have seen no such language relating to Comfort fares and N space.

I'm also confused about your 21 days. Where does that come from? The page on booking windows clearly says it's 14 days.

I was told by an AE agent ( I know, he does not work at the airport) that upgrades into PE can be based on, or into, all 3 PE fare classes.
When I tried to press for more details, he just repeated that statement.

With respect to the 14 day / 21 day window, there was a promotion over Christmas which lengthened the upgrade window to 21 days. It is over now.

Thanks, I must have missed that promo, and it wasn't listed on the website yesterday when I was looking.

That explains OP's 21 days, provided the flight was within the window (although based on the timing of the post, I'm not sure about that), but the question around why OP thought N space = upgrade remains open.

As the OP, I was told the u/g code to PY was N.....It was very difficult to book and in fact on my return flight YVR-YUL I had to up/g to J which only cost me 6 e/ups rather than 2 to PY as I was booked in COMFORT. This is the published schedule if you check the AC site.

However on my outbound, I inquired about J up/grade. First I was told no space, then later I was told I couldu/g to J if I would fork over more E/ups.Then, more confusion, I was also told I could not upgrade twice from Comfort to PY and then to J. Total Hogwash.

I settled into PY which was decent enough and I will earn +15% COS bonus due to Comfort booking class.

Meal was either chicken or beef and fairly decent. Wine or drinks were few, certainly not J service....but crew recognized me as a SE and I got a bit of extra attention.....Overall, happy..

OP, happy you're overall happy. I think a lot of us would prefer if AC were more transparent about upgrades. Mind you, AC feels it has an interest to not be too transparent, and in particular we have to respect that there is no rational reason (other than our desire to optimize...) why upgrading should correlate perfectly with the availability in revenue booking classes as released to 3rd party GDSes, which is information intended for a different purpose even if we can hack access with ExpertFlyer or similar.

It seems you interpreted the statement "the u/g code to PY is N" as "if there is N available, I should be able to upgrade". But as others have written above, the intended interpretation is merely "your upgrade will be taken out of the N bucket". So (again, as others have written), N>0 is a necessary but not sufficient condition for your upgrade to be confirmed.

I believe the right interpretation of the statement you were told "you can't upgrade twice" is "you can't first process and be confirmed for an upgrade to PY, and then 'level up' by seeing if you can also upgrade further to J". The system can't process both "confirmed upgraded to PY" and "waitlisted to upgrade to J" at the same time, apparently. However, many of us here have had the experience of being confirmed in some variant of Y, and waitlisted at the gate for upgrades to either J or PY, whichever is applicable. I don't know how automated it is, but I have had agents tell me, "wait a bit longer; I know I can get you to PY, but not sure yet if you can clear into J."

I think the underlying issue is that AC-think is that upgrades are a loyalty-increasing perk, a lottery (run according to their rules!) to which you get tickets whose precedence happens to depend on the fare type you booked (for other reasons), your status, and request time. But a lot of us view upgrades as a purchased entitlement, whose likely availability -- under predictable rules we can optimize against -- influences what fare type we buy and what routing we choose.

Well said and absolutely spot on in my case.

Glad to hear it worked out okay for you ^

Out of curiosity, where did you hear that N was the code for upgrades to PY?

I agree with much of your post, but I disagree about this. I suspect that this is more of an IT limitation than an intention on AC's part to hide PY upgrade inventory. After all, the rules around upgrading to J are clear and, with the right tools, one can easily look at R, P and Z space to determine ability to upgrade to J (if within the booking window, of course).

I like to think that this issue could be relatively easily solved by making PY upgrade space (and potentially PY rewards) come from a publicly visible fare bucket. For instance, F class does not appear to be in regular use with AC, or perhaps they could re-purpose one of the 12 different letters currently used for non-flexible economy to represent PY upgrades/rewards. Then they could publish F space (or A, or whatever) and we could just use EF or another tool to find out whether the space was available and not have to argue with reservations agents who may well not understand what's going on.