I booked a UA ticket on a CO metal a number of weeks ago.

I have place no less than 10 phone calls asking how I could upgrade my cheap-o L fare to Biz/First and I've gotten different answers every time.

I called a couple weeks prior to departure, about a week before and even a couple days prior, with no luck.

I'd tracked this flight (CO 48) for the last couple Wednesdays looking at the upgrade chances if you're on the list. It's gone out with about 20 open Bizfirst seats every time.

The last few phone calls just said show up at the gate and pray, so here I am. The gate agents aren't here yet, but after talking to a few customer service reps, the Presidents Club matrons (yikes!), and UA and CO phone support, they say they can't help apart from buying up, which is about $4,400.

The most surprising thing is they say there are no mileage upgrades available with about 23 seats available at this point.

Pretty amazing, and a big bummer!

Any suggestions??

Yes, don't book COdeshares.

You could have called CO to upgrade this (CO-pay and miles). It's too late at to request at the gate with CO.

*******

Who did you call? If you called CO they should have simply taken your cash+miles and either upgraded you or put you on the waitlist and it would have cleared.

Once inside 24 hours you cannot request the upgrade for a BF flight even if R inventory opens up.

With regards to miles for upgrades does the carrier you purchase from or the operating carrier matter? From the above I take it that even though he purchased from UA because its operated by CO he can use miles to upgrade on any fare class, not just B and above?

Edit: A few things I didn't see mentioned are whether he's trying to use UA miles or CO miles and if he's matched to a CO Plat

Not for flights on CO metal. It does for flights on UA metal.
So long as it is CO miles, yes.

The match doesn't matter but the miles used do; I, too, skipped over that part. Assuming CO miles it would be a trivial task to get the upgrade. Assuming UA miles it would have been impossible (though now UA miles can easily become CO miles so that does make it easier).

Last year I flew overseas GPT-IAH-FRA-JED starting on a CO flight, so the entire itin was technically through CO and the rest was codeshare. The big hops from IAH-FRA-JED were on Lufthansa. I wanted to use my CO miles to upgrade on Luft. End result: I had to contact the Star Alliance help desk to get it set up and then call Luft to make sure it was confirmed. Might be different for UA/CO, but the key was to call *A and they'll tell you what to do. Worked out well, but was a bit nailbiting as there was no guarantees until the day of departure. I would assume it would be easier with a CO/UA *A upgrade.

Not a ton. The main difference now is that the points can be transferred between the two. But if you want to upgrade a CO flight with UA miles you would need to use the *A upgrade program still. The main catch there is that you need a Y or B fare to upgrade which can be rather pricey.

^Valid point which I failed to mention. Just checked my records and I did have a B fare, so no out-of-pocket $ for me. End of the day, it really depends on how much you want it. For a 14+ hour flight like CO 48, I'd want it pretty bad. But not $4k bad. Was that the fare upgrade or the seat upgrade, Biff98?

Some other details: *A called my inquiry a "Special Service Request" then I received (via email) an upgrade cert from CO which told me to contact Luft.

Just curious... In a CO/UA case, if a passenger has status matched and has points available on UA, couldn't you just transfer the UA points you need over to CO and run the upgrade through OP rather than dealing with *A?

Well, you removed the critical part of my quote there, changing the meaning a bit.

Yes, today the best approach in nearly every scenario is to link accounts, move miles and redeem "home" miles for the upgrade. But if you are redeeming CO miles against UA metal or vv it is a *A move.

@sbm12: Ahhhhhh.... *gets it now* Sorry for changing it up!

@Biff98: Try it on the return, maybe? Let us know how it works out!