colpuck

I didn't know that. I thought they just did the seat chop.

TWA Fan 1

Right, but what CO doesn't do is downgrade upgraded passengers if passengers who paid for FC get bumped off another flight.

In that case, the passengers who paid for coach sit in FC and the ones who paid for FC (albeit on another flight) sit in Y...

ijgordon

Does any airline do that??? That opens a whole other can of worms. Of course the "solution" is to not fill the last [2] FC seats until the gate; CO seems to often fill the FC cabin with upgrades at T-24. Perhaps they know they usually have enough no-shows/misconnects to accommodate those displaced pax. After all, I don't recall hearing all that many examples here of FC pax being downgraded when they need to be re-accommodated. Current thread notwithstanding, of course.

born sleepy

Happened again to me yesterday. Confirmed in F/BF w/SWU BOS-IAH-EZE. Get to the airport, no seat. Downgauge from 737-8 to 737-7 so a row of F seats went away. Fortunately someone already up there took a bump back to Y for me. Unsure how that works but I'm sure s/he was compensated.

Often1

All of this points to why carriers should hold UG's to the gate. If, after the paying customers are acommodated in F, there remain seats, they should then be allocated however the carrier wants its UG system to work (presuming that the freebie UG system is a good idea in the first place).

TWA Fan 1

The upgrade system was created not just to reward loyalty (which, of course, is a big part of it), but also to free up seats in the economy cabin for last-minute, high-yield passengers paying either full Y or close to it.

Obviously, airlines would prefer to sell full F before full Y, but the reality is that full Y sells more readily than full F, because it is cheaper.

So by freeing up seats in the economy section beginning at about five days to go, the carriers have more Y inventory available for their highest-yield economy passengers.

This is one of the reasons that upgrades don't simply clear at the gate.

Often1

F is rarely cheaper than Y. What's often cheaper than Y are A and other discounted F fares.

TWA Fan 1

That's not the point.

F is rarely cheaper, that's why people are more likely to buy Y than F.

So when upgrades were created, one of the objectives was to free up Y inventory, to put that passenger (a highly-loyal customer) into F as a perk, but also to free up a Y seat (where that elite had been been sitting before he/she was upgraded) so that there would now be additional Y inventory available.

Since passengers are indeed more likely to buy Y than F (even expensive high-yield Y), the upgrade not only rewards the elite, but it opens up an additional revenue source (the elite's former Y seat).

That's one reason why upgrades are processed beginning at five days to go before travel, and not at the gate, to give last-minute bookings to Y a chance to accrue additional revenue...

wtigerFF

This has not been my experience on UA when they did an A320/A319 swap. I was in Row 2, not Row 3 so my seat still existed on the A319. I was pad at the gate to be downgraded and then I saw that there was one seat left in F and one person (not me), on the upgrade list. I inquired about it and was told that that seat was for paid F and there was a paid F on the upgrade list. So, the GA took my F seat away from me (1K upgraded via CR1) and pissed me off and gave it to a paid F who was hoping for an F seat but had no reason to be assured of it.

I wonder which set of rules will be used going forward.

njcommodore

sounds like UA doesn't have a set rule for this case.

exerda

Did the GA mean the paid F pax was on the standby list? Or had the paid F pax done a confirmed change for Y and been put on the waitlist for F (probably with a priority of FFCC, ahead of the UGDG "normal" upgraders)?

UA does typically downgrade upgraders as needed due to equipment swaps, but typically will not downgrade just to let a paid F pax from another flight stand by onto the flight.

wtigerFF

It would have been different if it was just from an equipment swap but after the swap and downgrade, it listed one F seat available. A person was taken from the upgrade list and given that seat. I'm guessing others were downgraded as there are 4 fewer F seats on the A319 but I've heard that downgrades tend to be from row 3. Anyway, I'm not sure what type of paid F the person was but according to the GA, he was the person listed on the upgrade list after I was downgraded. I was not put back on the upgrade list.

This was an aircraft change so maybe the GA took the opportunity to swap my seat for a paid F passenger who was on the upgrade list. It's also possible that everyone else was already paid F...

Steve M

That's not the only reasons. Many if not most corporate travel policies prohibit the purchase of F fares for domestic travel. It doesn't matter if F is only a little bit more than Y, the same as Y, or in some cases cheaper than Y - many business travelers simply cannot purchase an F ticket.

TWA Fan 1

Another good point.

The bottom line, is that the upgrade system was created not only to reward elites, but also to increase last-minute Y inventory (by having the elites upgrade out of Y into F), which traditionally has been among the highest yield in the airline industry.