Just got off the phone with CO and I am now even more confused then before. I am flying EWR-HKG in Jan and put myself on the waitlist using miles. I called up just to inquire about the status of the waitlist hoping to get some info as to where I was on the waitlist. There seems to be certain agents who give a lot more insight into the list and process then others.

Today's agent seemed to tell me that as of now, fare class is now third on the list. Meaning, first comes status, second is time on the list, and third is your fare class. Here I thought that since my fare was a W, if someone Platinum bought a ticket now with a B fare, he or she would jump ahead of me. No, said the agent.

Second mistake on my part according to the agent was, my thinking that a SWU would be in front of a Miles Upgrade. She said that since the SWU's were kind of free, and CO was not getting back miles, they are after miles. Any thoughts on this? Does anyone know differently? Are these SWU's not as valuable as I thought?

For international I believe the agent was correct, time of wait list is ahead of fare. It is my understanding that SWU's are the same priority as miles though when wait listing.

Welcome to the confusion known as Upgrades...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/conti...itization.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/conti...a-plat-1k.html

Just an update on the confusion. I just checked my reservation again 10 min ago. I was still on the waitlist. Hit the fair class button and noticed that there was 1 R seat available. I called the elite line and after holding for a few minutes was upgraded to R class. What's up with CO?

This is pretty common problem.

See also Upgrade available, SWU does not clear automatically


It seems that CO has difficulty getting its systems to do much of anything in real time.

Finding your own R availability is a great way to jump the waitlist.

Finding your own R availability is a great way to jump the waitlist.[/QUOTE]

This is the first time in the 13 years I'm doing this (10 as Plat with CO) that I ever had to do something like this. I guess you are saying that I have to be checking my outbound flight on an hourly basis!

The same thing happened to me this morning for my upcoming EWR-SIN flight. I guess they loaded a lot of R inventory overnight! Also, the list the agents see far in advance (more than a few days?) are alphabetical, not by priority order. Just a heads up.

I've been an Elite with CO for more than 10 years, and CO has had waitlist clearing problems as far back as I can remember. Not saying it never works, but it doesn't work plenty enough for it to be unreliable.

I would definitely keep an eye on it.

Sign up for an expertflyer alert.

A coworker scored 6 intl UGs in the last 2 months by watching for R avail and calling to jump the waitlist/beat the sweep.

^

Though it's sad that a third-party system can work better than CO's (soon to be UA's) own system.

My husband and I are both waitlisted for a flight IAH-LHR on 1/20/2012 using 4 of my SWUs. Two different PNRs so the reservations are not linked other than they are both using my SWUs. When I booked the flights, something was going on with the website and it would not let me waitlist online - I kept getting an error which told me to call for support. I did that and both my husband and I were manually waitlisted for the flight.

I have been checking the reservations daily and today I see R=1 for the return flight LHR-IAH on 2/9/2012. So, I called the Elite line and the lady I spoke with said there was only one seat available so I asked her to upgrade my husband instead of me. She said she didn't think she could upgrade either of us because someone else might be ahead of us on the list but she would check. After 15 minutes on hold, she came back and said that she would not be able to manually upgrade me - it was up to the system to do that. She did offer to have my husband removed from the waitlist and told me I could use miles and a co-pay to upgrade him.

I'm confused. What good is the waitlist if seats are released for upgrades and you are still on the waitlist? It looks to me like I could book a ticket today for that flight and since R>0, I could upgrade at ticketing with an SWU which would totally bypass the waitlist.

For additional info, my status is Platinum on CO - I hit the 100,000 mark in November and my SWUs were posted to my account the first of December. I booked this flight to London on 12/26/2011 and got added to the waitlist that day. My husband's status is Silver on CO.

Is there something I am doing wrong or do I just not understand how the SWUs are supposed to work? I've been Platinum for several years but this is the first time crossing the 100,000 mark and, of course, the first time trying to use the SWUs

Thanks for any hints on what to do in this situation - even if it is to do nothing and wait for the system to work.

call back and ask another agent to process it. Unfortunately, it can sometimes take 2-3 calls to get done what you want.

I've started watching availability closely ever since an international trip where my waitlisted upgrade cleared only because I happened to notice R was open and called in. (No idea whether anyone else was waiting!...)

IIRC the script that works is "hi, just checking in on the status of my waitlisted upgrade... now, does that still come out of the R bucket? ... I see the flight as R3 online ..." and that is usually good enough.

These days for important waitlisted trips I send myself e-mails, via a small cron job hooked up to a 200-line script that scrapes, parses, and prints availability information.

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, dealing with a Mom in the hospital so when I saw your answer, I checked again and now R=0. So, I guess I missed the opportunity.

Either someone else jumped on it, someone else was ahead of me on the waitlist, or someone else just booked a ticket and was able to take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade and the folks on the waitlist just got bypassed. Guess we will never know.