Status IS the primary driver of upgrades on CO. On the vast majority of tickets sold status matters a lot more than fare class.

The sweeps inside the 24 hour point are the ones that matter and they have made a significant difference in terms of folks being more likely to get the upgrades before things get to the gate, the only point at which there really is a problem of shenanigi.

I think he's talking about a gold buying a B three days before flight trumping a Plat on something lower. In that case, fare class trumps status.

As to the OP, I agree with those who say this is not necessary and will lead to all kinds of issues. Over the weekend I flew in coach on a B fare that I booked the day before the flight. F was full, with many upgrades and not many on the waitlist, so I assume that at least some of those in F were plats on lower fares, golds and perhaps even silvers. Seeing that would add no value for me, and might cause people who are less familiar with the system to demand that gate agents downgrade people who were previously upgraded via EUA. The transparency there would just not be worth it.

Luv it.

Yup, which is why I said that on the "vast majority" of tickets sold it is status that matters. Even within the Y/B/M tickets status matters if you get to the point that the list in question is being used.

Let us not forget, the list we're talking about isn't for EUAs anyways. It is only used at the gate for battle-field upgrades.

CO doesn't need more transparency. They just need to take a more firm position about it with employees.

If CO can train the employees to be intimidated from doing the right thing by customers in various situations, they can certainly train them to not break the rules w.r.t. upgrades as well.

+1.

I fly almost exclusively a transcon run EWR - SFO. Sometime in the last year, more people realized they could improve their upgrade chances by putting in miles, and I drifted down the upgrade standby lists. I started putting in miles for half my flights. I think I'm guessing correctly, as I upgrade 70% of the time on the flights I don't cover with miles, and 50% of the time on the (more competitive) flights I do cover with miles.

This is a game of poker with Continental. They have absolutely no interest in my making better guesses here; they want my miles, as often as possible.

If the list is the one referred by the OP, he included those already upgraded, not just the standby list.

While I think this discussion is academic with the pending merger, I do like the OP's idea. Before I made platinum some years ago, I thought that making Plat would result in nearly automatic upgrades. And, at first, that is what happened. Now my upgrade percentage is fairly low. I would be interested in what strategy would increase that percentage. Seeing the conditions of the actual upgrades would probably show that I needed to spend some additional money, not just concentrate on plat loyalty.

I would agree with this one.

I would have a problem with it also from a privacy standpoint. Publishing seat numbers side by side with fare information would bother me. It is way too much. If I had so little confidence that the technology wasn't processing the list in the way CO said that it would... well I would have to really think twice about investing my loyalty to that airline. As said, the real issues tend not to be with the technology.

The way I see it...if an upgrade clear, it clears--great. If not, it means somebody with higher status or who paid more got it instead (or both)...I tend not to sweat it too much. I am certainly not going to obsess with details as if I had only bought the ticket a week earlier I would have been the one who won in a tie breaking situation.

Agreed. On the other hand, we should thank goodness we're not in the same boat as Delta customers where shenanigans (especially in ATL) seem to be the law of the land.

However, we should acknowledge that CO has gone above and beyond in terms of providing an unprecedented level of transparency and useful information via the PDA site - which was designed based on our requests and feedback.

I hadn't thought about the seat number issue. Knowing what the person next to me paid to be there is TMI. In the OP's original proposal, the seat assignments on the list would have to be eliminated.

It was not designed because of FTers, it was designed because they didn't want to spend the cash on gate displays.

I thought most of the shenanigans occurred with the GA typically immediately prior to the door shutting. And the shenanigans was actually bypassing the posted list. Is the listing on the current list on the PDA site immediately prior to departure subject to shenanigans (ie. a passenger is on the list as the result of shenanigans)?

I'm not sure I'm following. Typically shenanigans involve having the computer records not match reality.

The standard shenanigans involve the battlefield upgrade. Customer has already boarded. GA assigns customer from Y into F seat, then processes non-rev into Y seat. Hands the non-rev the Y BP and tells them to sit in the F seat just assigned to paying customer. Wink-wink, nod-nod.

Either that, or simply upgrading the customer in the computer so it looks like the GA did their job, then not delivering said upgrades on the plane, so F seat flies empty.

A GA would never want to alter the ordering of the processing. That could be caught very quickly. The list remains in its typical order, but these sorts of games are played to ensure someone lower on the list (or not on the list) is seated in F, at the expense of the customer who was upgraded as far as the computer is concerned.

OK, so if rarely is the computer listing tampered with, then why would placing the reason the passenger is on the upgrade list help with policing shenanigans done at the gate which results in reality not matching up with the computer listing? What am I missing?

It wouldn't. It's a cultural problem at CO that needs to be dealt with.