Andrew Yiu

Yes you can.

Gaz

Cheers

cur

the air canada gate agent is a strange beast. imo the most valuable thing you can do is not go in and out of the line of questioning assuming that you are not in any way worthy of this, or thinking the "well the last agent on a different day on a different flight on a different airport with a different planet alignment did it for me!" argument will float.. not that i think you would ever do that

Merlin666

Now that I have managed to use the upgrade feature on AC website I am keeping my fingers crossed that no bumping will occur. The question is: on my trip from YWG to FRA via YYZ, when will the SWU cert. be collected? Or will I need a certificate for each boarding?

Stranger

You need only one.

If it gets collected at YWG, make sure they make a note on the file. They typically also write on the next boarding pass.

shirleywk

I am flying AC33 May 17 and hoping to use my ssw u/g cert. On May 7 there were no seats available for purchase in the last economy cabin. There were however approx 20 business class seats available. Later that night I checked business class seat availablity again and they were all gone! all of them!

I also noticed that mysteriously more than 20 available seats appeared in the last economy cabin. I immediately rang air canada to ask why this happened. The customer service person was rather rude and said more than once that business class was sold out but failed to explain how that happened and how all those economy seats appeared.

I am an elite aeroplan member and make 3-4 trips to Australia annually. My frustration is my inability to acquire an upgrade on these trips. Seems I keep missing out.

Is there a way to increase my chances?

Thanks

Andrew Yiu

Welcome to Flyertalk.

If business class is sold out, then it's sold out, not sure what explanation you were hoping for? What you saw had no correlation with each other. AC033 on the 17th right now is 100% sold out in J. The last few rows in the Y cabin (41 - 44 except 41ABCHJK on the 77L) are always reserved for day of departure so they were never assigned and then reappear in your case; it has always been available.

The Lev

How did you establish that there were 20 seats available? If you did it by counting the number of unassigned seats on the seat map, this is not a reliable method. Many people will book a flight and not ask for pre-assigned seating, so even though you see what appears to be 20 "open" seats, the cabin could be virtually sold out. You then check back later and the last few seats sell, so you can no longer view the seat map - if you were able to view the seat map for the sold out J cabin, it would probably still show many as open even though none are available.

A better way for you to check is to use a tool such as seatcounter.com or KVS - they show the number of seats available up to a maximum of 9.

zorn

Here's a good one:

[KVS Availability Tool 3.1.0/Platinum - Apollo: ITN/US-ARL]
There is one upgrade available, but no Y availability to upgrade out of.

shirleywk

I track available seats via air canada's website. I pretend to be booking the same flight I am currently booked on and then look at all available seats in all classes. The last cabin in economy was completely booked out. No seats showing. If there are seats they will be dark green. At the same time business class was showing more than 20 dark green seats - available seats.

Overnight all the business class seats disappeared and at the same time more than 20 economy seats in the last cabin on the aircraft became available.

It's as if more than 20 passengers seated in the last cabin got upgrades? I'm sorry but I have always tracked available seats this way and for the most part it works. I fail to see how overnight more than 20 business class seats can disappear and more than 20 economy seats reappear.

acysb87

Tracking on ACs website just won't work.
I booked a YYZ-MIA segment in March for early May travel using a Latitude pass.Showed 3 J seats at booking.Tried to use the on-line u/g function and was put on standby.Looked at Y cabin and it showed 15 seats as well.
Went to Seat counter and it showed 0's across the board.
When I checked furthur,the flight was indeed sold to 100% capacity.

I waitlisted for u/g at check-in.I was called at gate for u/g.^
I believe there were a few pax that mis-connected.

shirleywk

Thank you

That was helpful, and somewhat encouraging. I will remain positive and see what follows. It's just been more and more difficult using my SSW u/g certs. I had pretty extensive surgery 6 weeks ago and more than any other time I would love an upgrade for this flight (15 hours).

californiadreamin'

Since it seems to be important for you to mention it, did you have Air Canada give you the protocol to clear you for travel by their medical desk? Don't wait to be interrogated about it or risk being denied travel on the day of departure.

zorn

A few points:

- as others have pointed out, the seat map is only somewhat correlated with the number of tickets sold. It is perhaps the single biggest error that new FTers make, in all forums, for all airlines. It only tells you which seats you could request if you were to purchase a ticket at that moment. No airline would place such commercially sensitive information (the exact number of seats sold on any of its flights) on its website. There are some availability tools out there that can tell you if there are 0, 1, 2, 3, ..., 8, or "9 or more" seats available in every booking category. That will give you an idea of what is really available.

For example, I will be traveling YYZ-SYD-YYZ on May 24 and May 31 this month. I few posts up I displayed the availability for the return leg:

J3 C1 Z1 Y0 M0 U0 B0 H0 V0 Q0 L0 A0 R0 K0 N0 E0 S0 T0 I1 P0

The way to interpret this is "There are 3 business class seats for sale (J3). They will sell one at the Z and/or C restricted business price (C1 Z1). There is not a single seat for sale in the economy cabin (Y0). And since economy is sold out, there is also nothing available in the more and more restricted economy fare categories (Y0 M0 U0 B0 H0 V0 Q0 L0 A0 R0 K0 N0 E0 S0)"

However, here is the seat map for the business cabin:

[KVS Availability Tool 3.1.0/Platinum - Apollo Seat Map: 31 May 2008/AC 34/SYD-YYZ/77L/C]
Notice the number of unchosen seats. More than 3! That could mean that people have reservations in business class but haven't selected seats. It could also mean that they have oversold the Y cabin and are holding back some J seats for anticipated upgrades (via certificate or operational). Nobody knows except the airline.

I won't post the Y cabin seatmap, except I can see there are around 30 unselected seats. And yet the availability is Y0.

Conclusion: stop using seat maps to guess your upgrade chances.

How can you increase your upgrade chances to SYD? Keep in mind that this is a really popular route with no non-stop competition, and it avoids the US which is pretty big for some people. One thing you can do is travel on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Apparently those are less popular business travel days.

Another thing you can do is decide to spend more money and purchase a flexible ticket. It will cost about $5000, but you can confirm the upgrade at booking, if there is upgrade space available. You can see if there is upgrade space by looking at an availability tool and looking for I1 or better.

Yes, $5000 is a lot of money. But they are selling the seat for over $12000 outright, so as long as you can confirm the upgrade at booking, you can look at it as a pretty deep discount business class fare on a very, very popular route.

In this case, if your concern about traveling in Y given your current state of health is worth a few thousand dollars and you can wait an extra day, you could cancel your current booking and book a flexible economy ticket on May 18 and confirm your upgrade immediately.

If you wish to continue purchasing cheaper tickets and hope to use your SSWU, that's fine too. But do expect to miss out more often than not.

Now, there is another way to increase your shot at the upgrade on this route. It will also cost you some money. And that would be to parlay your 3-4 ultra long haul trips into Super Elite status. You must be earning 60-80 thousand status miles per year. If you can find a way to push that over 100k you will be in SE territory and be much higher on the food chain for the upgrades from cheap tickets. If you don't have any place in particular to travel to, you could consider going on trips for no reason other than to earn miles. These are called "mileage runs". I've never done it, but lots of people do. Check out the Mileage Run forum to see what I mean.

If you don't want to do any of these things, you could also consider using other airlines and FF programs to travel to Australia.

Rushfan1

I am SE member and on July 7 I will be flying from MAD to YYZ in class J. My parents will also be on the same flight (they have purchased seats but are not in an upgradeable class but if I understand correctly, that shouldn't matter).

My question is...pending space availability, can I upgrade one of them to Executive First with a SW or SSW certificate? If so, I would certainly let both of them sit in Executive First (my class J and the upgraded one) and take my other parent's economy seat.