For travel this Sunday Evening, I looked at ITN, confirmed that there were seats availible on the flights and purchased my ticket. This was done Thursday evening.

As a Platinum, this would be my normal time for a call to upgrade, as it is the start of my window. After repeated checks of my e-mail, no magic message from CO.

After three calls Thurday night, each agent with the same phrase "we have to let the system process the upgrade for you", I finally spoke with a supervisor.

I purchased my ticket after the computer had run the upgrades for Thursday, which is done from Midnite to 4 AM CST. This system does not continually review records all day long, but prioritizes the records the following evening. Thus my record for this flight went to the front of the line before the Golds would be searched out and upgraded. The same would happen if this ticket had been purchased one day later by myself or a Gold regarding Silver members.

After some additional prodding aka(Spainish Inquisition) I was able to get this information from him.

1. We have the CO and NW priority figured out.

2. Fare type is broken down to Y and discount only. Not by H over K, K over Q.

3. Discount upgrades are given by date of ticket purchase when Plats, Golds or Sivers compete equally for the same last seat.

I questioned him specifically about a scenerio that had FC with 14 Plats listed on the manifest. The flight crew told me that there were 5 or 6 plats in coach that flight. Sorry Golds and Silvers, but even under the old system you wouldn't have stood a chance on that one.

Some humourous comments he made were:

"priority does not have anything to do with the first letters of your onepass account, alphabetically by your first or last name, when your birthday is or your Onepass balance."

We'll get to the bottom of this sooner or later, but it sure would have been much easier if they had just stated criteria plainly.

Just checked my e-mail, confirmed upgrade on both segments. While my profile states aisle seat preference and there are eight seats open on each flight, the chose 4A on both. Oh well, now lets see if they can make a change over the phone.

Lets see....tickets purchased well in advance are almost always less expensive than tickets purchased closer to departure day. Therefore, under CO's new EUA plan, the less expensive the fare (except for Y) the better the chances of upgrading! Doesn't seem quite right.

If status miles mean anything, EUAs should be done in order of status level and then by number of status miles within each level. Just a thought.

MileKing:
Of course there are an infinite number of ways they could have designed EUA. CO told me that they designed it to be "fair". Fair, of course, depends on whose ox is being gored. I can only postulate that they ran the numbers and came to the conclusion that if they set the algorithm to reward purchasers of H before T tickets, they would have upset many more customers with the possibility of losing them to the competition. At least with the current system, we know (or will shortly) that the earliest reservation gets priority. Any one could theoretically book 330 days in advance. If they chose the H before T algorithm, every flight would be a crap shoot. As a purchaser of primarily Q an T tickets, the scenario they chose is the best case one for me. Others that buy a lot of H or B tickets would feel differently.

MileKing:

Something to consider: if one buys a T or Q or V fare within 7 days of purchase, this can be greater than an other discount fare such as K, if the K or other discount was purchased in advance.

It's interesting what the agent told you, jaguar99, because my experience this week is just the opposite. After purchasing my ticket on-line inside the 72-hour upgrade window, I called the Platinum desk for the upgrade at 11:00am. The agent told me the upgrade would be processed by the computer and to check back in a few hours. I specifically asked her if the software only ran one cycle per day at midnight and she told me no, that it's a continuous loop. When I called back two hours later, at 1:00pm, my upgrade had been processed and I had a seat assignment.

jAAck:
Was your ticket a "Y'?

OK, lets see I think this leads to another little problem.

Lets say, I book a flight for tomorrow for EWR-PBI(hey wanna visit mom and dad for the weekend). I'm platinum and ITN shows F1.

In the old days, I'd call onepass book the flight and upgrade all in one call. If I read jaguar's post correctly, My upgrade won't happen till midnight and if in the interim somebody decides to use miles for that last F seat, I wake up tomorrow morning and find I dont have a FC seat.

This is a major change.

It's worse for Silver and Gold, they could book that same flight and under the old system, they'd be able to get the upgrade, now if I call an hour laterr, I get their upgrade.

This hurts the Golds(gold elites that is, not oldgold and dgolds ) and Silvers.

Nice point, Boomer. Maybe CO should let elites upgrades newly bought tickets at purchase if within their window.

Once again, consider the tie-breaker: "Discount upgrades are given by date of ticket purchase when ..." But they have never said if it is the EARLIEST or the LATEST ticket purchased that gets the upgrade first. If it is the "latest," then that would tend to favor a higher-priced ticket.

Zip:

I think its pretty clear that earlier time of ticket gets the upgrade.