I am a weekly flyer and have been thinking about moving my business over to Continental. However , I must say I am pretty disturbed about Peter's experience with Contenental. I am wondering if there have been other people that find that Continental is difficult to reddem miles. I am currently a Platinum American Advantage member and have accumulated over 200,000 miles. I have had no problems with the airline really, but would prefer to fly first class every week. I know Gold Onepass members get free upgrades when they fly. Are there any restrictions on the upgrade policy?? Also, how easy or difficult is it to upgrade to first class. I will be flying DC-10s every week from San Fran to Houston and am not expecting problems. Is this wrong to assume. Thanks in advance. I would appreciate it if you would email an answer to me.

[email protected]

Thanks
Alden

I think you will be pleasantly surprised by One Pass. I am both a travel agent and a Gold Elite flyer on Continental. Although you will run into the occasional redemption problem (ie Europe in summer), CO is generally pretty good. Certainly better than those twits at American! Coupons for Platinum upgrades? Horrible!

Upgrading on a Y-fare is easy for any CO frequent flyer - simply have your agent call when booking the flight. Otherwise, gold is standby, silver and bronze use coupons (free - not paid stickers). You may consider writing to CO letting them know your desire to change over. Northwest gave me World Perks Gold with just a letter and copies of my CO statement.

In the past I had no trouble upgrading depending availability.
If you are active with an elite level I don't think you will have major problems, naturally they want to keep you happy. Consider my situation job change less air travel loosing elite status and for a longer period of time not being able to use the frequent flyer miles accumulated, than the situation changes with Continental. I did not have any problems with North West, Delta and USAIR in the same situation. Only Continental in my collection did not live up to its promises.
Good luck.

Inside Flyer once had an article on the percentage of seats airlines gave away as frequent flier tickets. Continental scored very low on that. I cannot recall the exact numbers but the numbers for Continental were half of those of United and American. This was a couple of years ago. I don't know what the current numbers are.

I am an active Gold Elite OnePass Member
and I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the benefits of Gold. Those DC-10's from SFO to IAH are really nice in Businessfirst. Talk to the OnePass Service
Center or to Continental marketng and you probably can get some perks for switching from American.

I was Continental gold several years ago. I agree with jaws43 that business first service is really nice. I sampled it on their SFO-EWR flights. In my opinion, Continental's business first and business class in United's 777 planes are better than first class in most domestic flights. Mileage earning ability was also excellent with Continental. However one area where I found them disappointing was the ablility to redeem the miles (thankfully the miles do not expire). I was not surprised when a couple of years ago I read the Inside Flyer article I had referred to in my earlier message.

Have things changed recently regarding being able to redeem miles?

Since I am a very active Gold member, I have found no problem in redeeming miles,
both for tickets and for confirmed upgrades
for my wife. Continental marketing has told me that they want Gold members to redeem
miles and they try to do anything possible for this to happen. However, if one is not
currently an active flyer with Continental, I
suspect that redemption gets more difficult.
After all, when Continental allows pre-boarding for Gold, Silver, & Bronze, half
the airplane boards. If half the plane is Elite, then there are a great deal of active
FF's in OnePass.

I think jaws43 postings confirm that Continental discriminates largely between active/nonactive and elit/nonelit status to the point that it not only gets difficult but impossible to redeem ff points, as in my case.

Reed the fine print in one of your newer account sheets, it says after 18 month of none activity Continental might exercise the right to cancel your account.

Talking about frequent flyer points do not expire is just lip service.

Thank you all for all your responses. I really appreciate the info. I have decided that I will try and switch to Continental. I am flying to San Antonio, and figured out that by flying through Houston and getting the extra 125% bonus (as opposed to americans 100% bonus for platinum members) I can recieve about 11800 (1645 sfo to iah, 500 miles iah to sat, 1000 miles for purchasing tix on line) miles a week as opposed to 9000 a week on American. I think it will be worth the change.

I'm still a little curious about how upgrades work. Can you earn upgrade stickers?? How far in advance can you reserve an upgrade without stickers?? Their explanation about upgrades are vague.

Also, are my chances for upgrades good on the MD-80 planes from IAH to SFO???

Thanks to all who replied to my earlier message.

if you pick your days of the week and actual flites, upgrading should work. problem with continental is they work very hard selling at discount or bonusing first class rather than than giving it away(with free onepass upgrades). many bulk deals with big companies(courtesy upgrades) and travel agencies (most recently american exp.) also, if you check the consolidator ads in the sunday ny times for discounted first class to europe it is almost always CO.

Upgrading out of Houston is very tough.
I would say forget about day of departure
upgrades. There are enough people paying
fares that are upgradable in advance that you
stand very little shot at a standby. I have
sometimes connected thru Houston and even
getting checked in at one of the coasts, the
out-of-Houston upgrades are the toughest.
Don't forget to look at America West flights,
upgrade privileges are identical.

mrjohnnyt is right. Houston is CO's home base with over 80% of the flights at Bush IAH being CO. However, if you check in
at SAT, your possibility of getting Gold
upgrades thru to SFO is pretty good. the reason is you beat the Gold's going from IAH to SFO because they cannot check in
for upgrades until 2 hours before flight time.
You would check-in at SAT before the 2 hour time limit.
Also, I believe SAT has a nonstop to LAX
and you could connect to SFO. You might try that connection. Beleive me, I am a
Houston-based Gold and it is tough.

Howdy Folks,

I've been flying mostly on Delta but have been contemplating the switch to Continental depending on the existence of some routes. Given that I live in Seattle, can I fly Continental or a partner to LA, SanFran, Seoul, Tokyo, and Hawaii? I've been trying to find this on their website with no success. I've also contacted Continental but they have yet to get back to me. If anyone can help me out, I'd appreciate it.

captop

How is CO overseas? We have heard that BusinessFIRST is supposed to be great. I know American's C and F class is a joke compared to United. The flight attendants on American are always somewhat robotic in their service. Do CO's employees really try to serve, or are they like DL's employess -- it is a job. Phil

Well, this is my first week flying Continental, and I must say I have been somewhat disappointed.

I was supposed to fly Continental Sunday night, but when I got to the airport, the flight was delayed so badly that they rerouted me onto a Delta flight (which was not bad by the way). So, when I boarded the Delta flight, it was completely packed and since I do not have elite status on Delta, I was not able to get on the plane in time to get my bags into the overhead. Not fun.

Well, on Thursday I will be flying Continental back to San Francisco. Well, I was hoping to fly first class back to San Fran. I called yesterday afternoon (approximately 48 hours prior to the flight) and was disappointed to hear that there were no more seats available for upgrades. Im wondering if this happens very often. I fly through Houston and know that it is more difficult to get upgraded when flying through Houston, but I thought that 48 hours would be good enough to get an upgrade on a DC-10 to San Fran. How many confirmed upgrade seats do they alot on these planes, 2? Anyway, lesson learned. I am going to confirm my upgrades way further in advance. As soon as the clock gets to 72 hours in advance, im going to call in. Hope the situation improves, or I may just go back to flying American.