Continental started tracking F/Y-fare buying patterns a while ago and seem to hold the F inventory open for flights where there is a high percentage of paid-F and paid-Y. I fly in and out of LGA a lot, and I rarely ever see an upgrade 5 days out on a discounted fare. The last couple of weeks flying on deeply discounted fares, I haven't even cracked the top-10 on the UG list fighting for one open seat. I suspect your BUF flight may be similar. Calling the Elite desk won't help you out. It's easier to check the website to see what seats are open and that may give you a clue about who's getting upgraded a lot better than listening to someone who might not be paying strictest attention to what's going on (e.g., was he #32 on his connecting flight, and misremembered which flight he was checking?).

It may well also be the fact that the Gold who got the upgrade didn't know what kind of ticket he was on. Last year I got the battlefield upgrade CLE-IAH on a discount ticket (don't remember the fare class) and made a comment to the guy next to me about it and he said he was Gold on a discount ticket and got the upgrade at 3 days. I appropriately whined about it here at FT and Scott looked into it and said that the guy beside me was on a Y fare so he should have gotten the upgrade first (which I agree with).

The introduction of last minute fare buy ups really changed the upgrade game, especially for Platinums. It basically allows people to cut the upgrade queue for as little as $100-200. If you're looking for transcon upgrades on a low fare, you can pretty much forgetaboutit these days!!

Last week, Me and my brother took EWR-LAX to visit family. I paid $240 for a S Class round trip ticket. My brother paid a higher fare class because he bought his ticket late. The flight had 2 first class seats available at T-8hr. After checking in, I saw I was #6 on the upgrade list and My brother was #1 on the list. I didn't like my upgrade odds so I checked OLCI again and OLCI offered me to buy up for $180, presumably to M. Took the offer and sat in first for the flight. My brother thought his chances were pretty good since he was number 1 on the upgrade list. Apparently someone else must have taken the buy up offer because he ended up sitting in coach for the five hour flight.

So if you're a Plat and want to sit in first for a long flight, be ready to pay for the fare buy ups. If you don't, get ready to sit in coach. I think this is the new Continental. As Seinfield said... not that there's anything wrong with it. -- Just have to play the game differently now.

CO apparently is having real problems with its automated EUA system as well. I have a similar situation - still waiting for a platinum elite upgrade. I bought the ticket over a month ago and is a fairly inexpensive ticket but far from a super cheap fare. 5 days out, 4 days out, 3 days out - no upgrade. I'm looking at seats and there's loads of seats up front (I know - not all are from the upgrade bucket but since I've been monitoring at 6 days out the number of open seats hasn't changed). I called the elite line yesterday and innocently asked if everything was correct in my record since I hadn't seen any upgrade as yet. He replied that everything is in order and that there are upgrade seats showing as available and that my chances looked good for an upgrade, but that "the upgrade system hasn't been operating properly since the move to *A". He said that he's seen lots of folks not get upgraded at their window when they should have been, but that they still "should" get upgraded in the correct priority, but as late as at the gate. I mentioned to him that I haven't received an elite upgrade at 5 days out for at least a year, and he didn't seem very surprised to hear that. It's now 2 days out for me and still no upgrade, and my return is 3 days out and no upgrade either with 14 seats showing open (again, probably not all upgrade bucket seats). In contrast, last week I flew on a deeply discounted Delta ticket and received my plat upgrades promptly at 5 days out.

If this is the new Continental, I'll take Delta with all their problems. Upgrades are perhaps the most important perk of being elite to me, and if CO doesn't deliver I'll go to someone that will.

Do you think that you'll actually not get the upgrade, or just that there is a problem right now with them being assigned in advance rather than at the gate?

CO has historically been VERY reliable in terms of assigning the upgrades in the correct order. Not perfect, but darn close.I don't think that is changing here, just that the advance part is messed up. I'd imagine that they're going to fix it rather than leave it the way it is now.

Call me a cynical new yorker... but i think Continental is purposely not running EUA to see how many last minute fare difference upgrades they can sell.

Just to add to the stories, over the weeeknd IAH-SMF r/t had at least 12 open seats 5-days before and up until boarding time. I similarly called at the 3 day mark and was told it should clear soon. At the 24 hour mark I called web help and was told there were no seats left - I knew there were but did not question it. At check in I ask and the agent about it and he seemed puzzled it had not cleared and he was able to assign seats on the spot. This happend r/t
I agree with sbm12 on co reliability with upgrades and believe that this is only a temporary problem that will soon clear up

If you are rolling into or out of NYC, I'd suspect the chances are higher that they are holding off running EUA to offer more Y-up inventory.

Really? Leaving a known checkin loophole open for four (4) years after learning about it, then layering an auto-checkin procedure on top of it that could further exploit it, is nowhere near darn close to perfect in my book.

And not adding passengers to waitlists for un-upgraded segments on web mileage upgrades is not exactly doing everything they can to assign upgrades in the correct order.

CO can be very clugy in the upgrade department.


I'm sure they'll fix it. The question is when. It's been going on for several weeks now.

CO has been a member of *A for only 2 weeks now. In what world do you live in that suggests the problem has been extant for "several" weeks?

As for the loophole, I'm going to suggest that the number of times it was exploited to the detriment of the correct upgrade sequence was statistically trivial.

At this point, I fully expect to be sitting in coach going and returning.

I agree.

Sure, if the majority of customers are not checking in online.

But it's laughable to suggest this loophole as being statically trivial if the majority of customers in EUAble markets (e.g. domestic) are checking in sometime before they arrive at the airport.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying CO should drop everything and solely focus on this, as I think they've got more pressing obstacles with the recent transition. But I think that if CO considers the EUA to be the "cornerstone" benefit of the elite program, they should make it priority to plug a potential loophole.

Yep. I can't get upset I suppose as they are trying to increase revenue where they can but for $100 (esp if you didn't pay much for your fare in the first place) we're going to see lots of line-jumping.

(duplicate post)