I think this type of mistreatment of elites is why some fear CO-style CHANGE coming to their airlines.

Although I haven't snickered at any CO elites, I have on more than one occasion when I was still just a AA PLAT (50K) been very happy to be flying AA so that I got my upgrade while my colleagues on CO who were CO PLATs (75K+) didn't get theirs. In the last year, I've also been pretty annoyed with a colleague who routinely booked CO higher fares [rather than the lowest fare available on CO] just so that he would have a better chance of getting upgraded while I was able to book AA's normal low fare for my upgrades -- since our travel expenses were combined and then billed to the cost-conscious client and his flights were routinely around 1K while mine were $400 ...since I was the one having the billing discussions with the client, but didn't want to "out" my colleague as the driver of costs.*

*To elaborate further, the client had a fixed budget for the total work, so if we had spent less on CO flights, the client could have paid for more consulting which would have been more $$ into our pockets rather than $$ lost to CO just so colleague didn't have to sit in coach on CO.

Yes and no. In fact the agent is probably wrong and there is no change fee to get to the Y fare but they aren't pricing it right in their system, hence the discrepancy.

There is also the potential that changing the one segment actually changes the fare for the other segments, too, which is different than buying new. It sucks that the agents aren't always 100% right, but very few folks actually are. I'm not sure that it qualifies as mistreatment.

And I'd be pissed at a colleague spending extra money for their upgrade, too.

I admit :eek: my perceptions of CO have been flavored (misflavored ;) ) by watching colleagues not get upgrades and watching the other colleague game the system to get upgrades.

Perhaps not mistreatment, but the type of treatment, I wouldn't want AA to emulate. I'm happy that AA doesn't 1) price an upgrade so low that non-freq flyers could snap them up for a measly $50, while top and mid-tier members miss out 2) force the buying of higher fares to qualify for an upgrade (I heAArt being able to buy a cheap fare and still SWU on a lie-flat to Europe.)

Sorry, but I don't think that this makes any sense at all.

If the airline can sell the F fares why shouldn't they?

Moreover, where are these "measly $50" upgades that you are speaking of? They simply do not exist, at least not while there are elites who have not been upgraded already. If a non-elite is on a Y ticket they will almost certainly be offered the opportunity to buy the F seat for the fare difference, a number that can be as little as $50 in many cases. But that customer is actually buying the F seat at its listed price, albeit in two transactions. As a platinum elite I have absolutely no problem with CO doing that.

Sbm12, I've reposted Houston2mnl's quotes. I inferred from his statement that CO was willing to sell an upgrade at $50 rather than open up the upgrade inventory for him from:

If you were speaking of selling upgrades to non elites at checkin I think most elites are sick of that before there upgrades clear.

And repeating random, unsubstantiated rants read on the internet doesn't make them true. :-:

He's talking about a situation where elites - and ONLY elites - can buy a full fare ticket that upgrades immediately into F. That is quite different than the assertion that non-elites are getting upgrades for $50. Not only is it $50 on top of the relatively higher fare, but it isn't open to all.
:confused:

Since they aren't selling upgrades unless all elites will clear I'm not sure this is relevant. The buy-ups are a different story and I can understand why some folks might not like that. I'm not one of them. I think that CO should be selling their F cabin as much as they can and then giving away upgrades of what's left to the elites. I do not understand the mentality of suggesting that the carriers price the F cabin so high that it will never sell, ensuring upgrades for everyone. It isn't smart business sense.

It's not as easy as just selling as many F seats as possible. You're assuming that the current F pricing is the optimal pricing to maximize revenue. Obviously the extra marketing effort with the buy-ups probably has a modest positive impact on sales, but who's to say that they couldn't generate more revenue by pricing F even higher? Sell fewer tickets, but more revenue per ticket. Potentially higher overall revenues. But obviously a very complex interaction of circumstances. And of course a side benefit of the higher-priced-fewer-tickets-sold model is that there are more upgrades. :)

Selling fewer F tickets at high prices used to be the norm. Certain execs and celebs would pay whatever F cost to get a seat in F. With many empty F seats, the F buyer then had lots of flexibility to change flights. And the old upgrade method was to only fill up those empty seats with elites 2 hours before flight time or at a minimum hold back a few seats.

Obviously, CO did the analysis and figured they could get more revenue by pricing F cheaper and with B and M higher fare instant upgrades. The current pricing is more in line with the simplified fares that AA tried to set several years ago - which failed. CO's strategy is a hybrid of that - but more of a focus on value F fares.

Well, my point is that it's not a precise analysis because it's all based on hypotheticals and many moving parts. It probably involves many PhDs. I also have to imagine that the optimal pricing varies depending on what's going on in the economy at any given time. What was optimal a year ago may or may not still be optimal. Obviously CO can do a better analysis than I can given they have more data, more PhDs, and more computing power, but I don't think it's reasonable to assume that they get it right every time. Particularly since other airlines (like AA) seem to be sticking with the high fare model, and AA is doing relatively well financially, AFAIK.

I don't know that CO necessarily has it right, but I trust their RM department more than I trust that of FlyerTalk. :-:

Oh, and CO is doing rather better than AA financially the past few quarters IIRC.

And repeating random, unsubstantiated claims doesn't make them true.

Are you suggesting that CO is actually selling upgrades - not buy-ups - to non elites where there are elites who will not receive a EUA as a result of that seat being sold?

Thus far there has not been any confirmed cases of this that I've read here. Show me one and I'll shut up. In the mean time, however, I'll leave my tin foil hat in the closet and continue to live and travel in the real world.

I've appreciated your technical expertise in many posts but, I don't know how to have any type of dialogue with someone who simply uses the, "you don't know what you're talking about/you don't have enough facts/because CO says so," against everyone other persons' experiences and observations.

I'm not saying it "because CO says so." I'm saying it because no one has actually provided anything that shows any indication that it wasn't exactly what we have been told would happen. Every time someone says "I was offered a buy-up at $NNN and there's no way that is what it would cost to buy up to F" the reality is that the number in question is exactly what it would take to buy up to F.

Like I said, if shown an example I'll STFU but until then suggesting that things aren't actually going that way is somewhere between ignorant and outright lying, IMO. Bring a dialog, but do it with actual data.

Sorry if I like to see facts to back up a claim. Reality can be a pain that way. :rolleyes: