tmwe6

It was time for me to check again on a CO operated flight. At my reservation page it showed a whopping $479 dollar upgrade for PBI-EWR. Then at OLCI I saw this:
Never seen this before and was wondering if it is a normal thing.

legalalien

How long was the upgrade list?

TommyC80

Yeah I've seen this before. I believe it happens when there are more FC seats available than elites on the flight. If that happens CO will slash the upgrade price dramatically.

Last year, some non-elite friends were able to upgrade EWR-LAS on a cheapo ticket for $109. It booked into R class.

PDXPremier

Anyone ever get these offers on award tickets?

UA-NYC

There have been multiple posts on here of CO offering these for award tix - $99 seems to be a common rate

OP - is the flight tomorrow? Would love to see what the UG list looks like.

Nice that they're assigning so much value to their F experience...

sbm12

As opposed to UA, which sells comparable upgrades on their long-haul international routes at a similarly discounted ratio? Or compared to some other carrier?

UA-NYC

Nothing confusing here, big difference between $79 and $999. UA also isn't flashing a $2,999 number with a big slash through it, conveying an "everything must go" message...

Fanjet

Please! I was offered a buy-up while checking in on a FF ticket IAD-AMS a few months ago for about $500 plus change. I declined the offer since it was on an ancient-configured 777. So $79 for a flight that is barely 2 hours in length, and maybe has a snack service, isn't that off in price.

UA-NYC

Part of the issue is the absolute value - whether $599 or $999, the raw number is inevitably going to scare off a lot of people. $79 is much more digestible.

The other issue is the infomercial-style pricing - I haven't seen it yet (would love to see a screenshot), but the execution seems quite chintzy.

sbm12

Just like there is a big difference between the regular full price for the seat on EWR-TPA versus the lnog-haul routes. Hence my use of the word ratio.
Yeah, lack of sales acumen must suck. Why is it so bad that CO can market their product?

UA-NYC

I doubt that most consumers are doing ratio calculations at the point of purchase. It's the absolute $ amount that matters.

Market the product all you want, no issues with that - just try and keep it premium / aspirational / quality (befitting of the largest carrier in the world), and not bargain-bin style that this offer (and a lot of the old CO billboards) feels/felt like.

sbm12

You don't think that a customer who would pay $500-900 for Y->C on a long-haul international flight would balk at that price fora 2 hour domestic segment? It is all about the ratio.

The airline is in it to make money, not make the elite who got the upgrade feel better about the seat they're getting that someone else might pay $99 more to get in to. If they really wanted to keep it premium and aspirational then getting rid of elite upgrades would be the first step IMO.

chavala

This just happened to me. $122 to upgrade Aug 18 DFW-IAH-SJO. It wasn't available when I booked it a month ago, then a few days ago it appeared. An hour later it was gone, then a day later it appeared again (and I grabbed it).
Very odd.

UA-NYC

I'm saying that market will be a lot bigger for the domestic upgrade, as it's a more affordable, approachable price. Establish your sub-$100 price point and down goes paid domestic F demand.

We still don't know what the WL looks like for this specific case - quite curious if there were any WL'd pax while this offer was going out.

They could go to that extreme, but that would also be non-competitive in the US market. Maybe there's a common ground.

Sure, you can make money a bit at a time slashing your F seats to $79-$99 - but that's short-term thinking at the expense of long term strategy. However, that does seem to be $misek's MO so far so who knows.

sbm12

How so?

They aren't ever actually selling the F seat for $79-99. That's the up-charge on top of the fare already paid. And if the choice is between having it empty and making zero dollars or filling it and making $99 I'd say that both the short term and the long term benefit. The main way the long term fails is if it conditions customers to not buy F because it is so easy to do the buy-up. In this case, however, it seems to be that they're going for a market where folks would never buy it anyways so there's no conditioning. In fact it might be positive conditioning in that they think they might have a chance at F so they're willing to pay a bit more to fly CO.

This isn't going to have the folks who want to know they're in F for the flight buying the cheap seats and hoping for an upgrade unless it happens all the time. And it really doesn't on most routes.

I find it laughable that an elite who gets upgraded by EUA/UDU can claim that selling the F seats at a discount in some way makes the product less premium.