Another data point - I changed my flights due to a delay and decided to re-run the PDA checkin process to see if a buy-up was there (I was #2 on the list).

Sure enough, I saw CLE-LAX offered for $159 with a note that 19 people were eligible for FC, while only 4 seats remained. My upgrade cleared a moment later, but I was annoyed to see yet another segment fee upgrade where I should only be seeing fare different buyups.

On a side note, the original flight I complained about was downgraded from a 753 to a 752 - I'm pretty sure a few folks grabbed that $119 offer, so I wonder if any of them were downgraded...that must have been an ugly scene at the gate, going from 24F to 16F.

Hi bocastephen, thanks for sharing this. I've posted an update on the progress we've made here in the Has EUA Stopped Running? thread. But, if you continue to come across other examples, please let us know.

Shannon

Funny I had the same thing happen and posted on here and 99 percent of the comments were you can't blame the airline for trying to make money vs. giving a platinum (now 1k) member a free upgrade. I disagree. I am loyal to CO now United due to those benefits. That day there 7 tickets left in F and I was offered an upgrade at 99 dollars. I will find the post and email the specifics to CO insider.

I called the elite desk and while I was on hold for a manager I miraculously got upgraded with 6 others.

What I would like the CO insider to comment on is why my upgrades used to clear like clockwork at 5 days out. Now it is not uncommon to see 7 seats left and to have it sit there until 48 sometimes 24 hours before. Has the system changed?

Thank you Shannon

The attention to these issues and the feedback we receive from your team is part of what keeps us loyal customers.

As I mentioned in the other thread, my EUA's for my return segments cleared like clockwork, so hopefully things are returning back to normal.

The issue has always been finding a balance between benefits and incremental revenue. Some folks here feel that incremental revenue always trumps benefits, which is both incorrect and nearsighted - the key is balance.

When properly implemented, most of us feel the segment-fee and buy-up upgrade program is a reasonably fair compromise. No Elite should ever be shorted out of an upgrade due to a cheap segment-fee offer, while CO should be allowed to advertise the difference between your existing fare and the best available F-cabin fare you qualify for, and every customer should be free to take such an offer. With the huge increase in B and M fares, most of the buys-ups went from "tens of dollars" to "hundreds of dollars", anyway.

Anyway, I discovered the non-reclining exit row window with an empty middle seat isn't such a horrific place to sit after all....so if CO would only re-implement the middle-seat blocking program for top-tier Elites (UA had this before), things would be even better.

Actually I feel it's neither fair nor good business to charge exactly the same buy-up fee for an already ticketed passenger as he would have had to pay at ticketing unless the system still projects that F seats will go out empty (highly unlikely these days). Doing that only encourages people to game the system by buying cheap tickets and waiting to see if they're likely to get the free upgrade, knowing they can always jump in later if necessary with no cost penalty when F gets down to the last few seats.

I guess they feel that the instances they lose out because of what you propose are outweighed by the revenue they do bring in as a result of offering no-change-fee buy-ups. If they charged $150 on top of the fare difference, I'm sure very few people would take advantage.

And when "F gets down to the last few seats" the fare does, in fact, go up in most cases. Whether it goes from an A fare to an F fare, or whether the M-UP is restricted, CO still has decent control over its revenue management. And I suspect there really isn't a lot of what you propose going on.

By "penalty", I just meant some extra cost, not necessarily the full $150 change fee. In any case, once CO gets all of the bugs fixed, the system pricing may look reasonable.