Any idea when the BA counter opens? I doubt it's early in the morning...I am on the 6:00 AM AA flight to ORD. I was told I should have my BA ticket numbers to give to the AA agent so I can be fully checked in..can i find these on the AS My Trip page? I couldn't find them on the BA MMB.

do upgrades really exist?
 

I fly strictly between Seattle and Chicago. This is the first year I've really traveled a lot for work and I was excited when I hit MVP earlier this year. In my naivete I thought the upgrades would start coming fast and furious. (It's OK to laugh at me, I don't mind).

I will hit MVP Gold later this year. Here's my question:

For SEA-ORD-SEA how often, if ever, do you think I could get upgraded on a non-qualifying fare? As an MVP it seems like I'm at least 30th in line on the list for an upgrade - how much would that be improved as an MVPG?

Follow up question... I'm guessing SEA-ORD-SEA has a higher percentage of AS frequent flyers which is hurting my chances for an upgrade. Are there routes out of SEA that are known to be better for upgrades at the MVPG level? If i'm planning a leisure trip, where are some route options that could improve my chances for an upgrade?

Thanks!

ORD is a tough route! I once saw four(!) folks get called up from coach at the last minute; we all assumed a family of paid F's missed their flight.

MVPG comes with four upgrade codes that can work on certain transcons and Hawaii flights on relatively low fares.

Your guess is pretty much spot on. ORD, along with DCA, EWR, etc. - those transcons are typically elite-heavy with a goodly representation of 75K's.

On the other hand, the west coast routes (e.g., SEA-SFO, SEA-LAX) will afford you a better chance of upgrading as an MVPG (let alone an MVP). So factor that into your leisure travel planning.

Welcome to Flyertalk and the AS Forum, and congrats on making the Gold level later on this year!

No, I was more suggesting just using the kiosk that is infront of the counter, checking in online would still be faster.

When looking at your reservation on the BA site request an e-ticket receipt be emailed to you. You can do the same when viewing the reservation on the AS site. The receipt should have the ticket numbers on it. Have that printed to show the AA agent in addition to the boarding pass.

In my experience all the agent requires is flight numbers.

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's PWP wondrousdevice3.0: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0.0.583 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

If time and price permits try to route via PDX. One earns more miles, and probably a better shot at an UG ^

But welcome to the Alaska Airlines forum ^

As beckoa alluded to, anything not out of SEA offers a much better shot. On your ORD trips, SEA-PDX-ORD will probably triple your chances of an upgrade at the cost of an hour and a half or so of your time (45m flight+45m-ish layover), although the extra 500 EQMs (and 1,000 RDMs as a Gold) helps to make that routing a bit less painful.

For the few transcons that offer them, PDX has similarly better (but not perfect, of course) odds.

For east-coast trips, LAX-DCA has far better odds than SEA.

Most of the Hawaii flights offer good upgrade odds, as elites (who tend to be business travelers) don't typically fly that route. However, Hawaii being a popular honeymoon and vacation destination, while you may be at or near the top of the upgrade list, you may end up never getting the upgrade because F may already be full because all of the seats were bought with full-fare F fares.

I'd imagine the new SAN-MCO has a pretty good shot, as neither city has much of an AS elite population, and it's not quite the honeymoon destination route that Hawaii or FLL (for cruises) is, so you won't face that challenge.

Midcons are pretty easy, IME. ANC-SEA is extremely tough; PDX-ANC is a bit less difficult.

???

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's PWP wondrousdevice3.0: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0.0.583 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

50/50 shot at beer/wine...

I think the sake got to our poor mod

Supposed to be PDX-ANC methinks ;)

I blame jet lag (despite having a nice night's sleep last night ;)).

Is this the toughest upgrade is AS's system? My personal sample points for UG's

SEA<->EWR (1/3)
SEA<->DCA (2/3)
SEA<->ANC (0/4)

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's PWP wondrousdevice3.0: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0.0.583 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

I've been upgraded on most routes but transcons *can* be as hard as ANC-SEA...there's a lot of traffic that's paid on both sets of routes.

No, I think he meant what he said. PDX-SEA. I live in EUG and often our choices are to go to SEA, PDX or....PDX/SEA or SEA/PDX (believe it or not, yes, back and forth between the two before we get on a transcon connection). I usually opt for the the shorter, lesser connection, but his point was there are more Elites coming out of SEA so if you continue to PDX to make your longer flight, your chance of being upgraded is better.

I see he corrected himself...but I still see lots of the above combinations coming out of Eugene.

There's no first class on SEA-PDX, so it's really hard to get an upgrade on that flight. ;)

Or maybe that should be: every seat is first class on SEA-PDX, so it's really easy to get an upgrade on that route. ;);)

Duh, true, I was thinking of GETTING to PDX to catch a flight elsewhere, instead of just leaving from SEA.