How do automatic upgrades work?
 

I am curious about booking a flight in economy (PHX-IAH) and how it will work for getting a free upgrade to first. I am more familiar with Delta and being platinum I usually find out 5 days before the flight. Well, with Continental, I rarely fly with them in the USA, mostly earn the miles on other *A carriers.

So, if I book an economy ticket on CO as a Platinum member do they offer free upgrades similar to Delta, given availability.

Thanks and sorry for kind of a newbie question... Powers

CO offers upgrades via Elite Upgrade Automation (EUA) that works a bit like the system over at DL. For CO Plats, the upgrade process begins five days out and will be sorted by status, fare bucket, and then time purchased.

Note that this is only offered for flights that are not marketed as BusinessFirst. All BusinessFirst flights (mostly international) do not qualify for EUA.

Thank you very much!

AFAIK the only domestic BF flights are between EWR/IAH/GUM and HNL. Am I missing any?

OTOH there are plenty of international flights w/o BF service: all N & S America except GRU, GIG, EZE, and LIM, and all CO Mike flights except GUM-HNL (though the 764 on NRT-GUM still has the BF headrest covers).

Nope.

Yup, but the post wasn't that all international are BF, simply that not all BF are international.

The distinction that matters for EA or not is whether the flight is marketed as BF. Period. Everything else is just explanation on top of that.

The difference between the CO and DL systems is that you don't see the Upgrade Status on your reservation.

So instead of Upgrade: Requested, it's just the flight there, and if it happens, it happens.

Yup. I was just elaborating upon what you wrote.

In the past, IIRC, CO let see your upgrade "request" in the form of the On/Off selection for the upgrade. Whatever happened to that?

I recall recently seeing that selection on one page (not the normal view reservation page, but somewhere else). I think it was the "Print Itinerary" page, but it's no longer there.

To add the obvious: after checkin one can see the upgrade request on the flight status page.

It was unreliable and caused more trouble than it was worth. They got rid of it.

Not sure whether you are referring to DL or CO.

If you are upgraded on CO - your managed reservation will show R class for that segment.

When you check in - if you have not been upgraded - then you will show on the PDA site upgrade standby list.

So on CO you really know what your upgrade status is.

Right, you just don't see anything until it's been upgraded. On other carriers, there's typically a notation next to each segment regarding upgrade status.

On DL it shows Upgrade: Requested, on UA it shows Upgrade: Pending or Upgrade: Waitlisted.

CO doesn't show anything like that. It just happens or it doesn't based on the status of the number in the reservation.

I have a question about upgrades too, I'm planning to pay with miles+service fee on my ewr-hkg flight this Dec., how can I check if there are any availability? I'm shocked that the CS agent told me I will be waitlisted. I checked the seat availability on the site it only has 2 BF seat occupied.

Seats for sale and seats for awards are different. If you want to watch the award inventory you have to do a booking online and check the box that says you want to upgrade. If the upgrade is available on the flight then you'll get a message to that effect.

Thanks, just checked it and it is not available the whole month. Guess it's because of the Christmas season, I'll just have to waitlist then.