I am planning a brief trip to Hong Kong. When checking ITN for the availability on the 22nd and the 25th Z class shows 9 both ways. When I called the agent, she told me that there were no upgradable seats for the outbound only the return. How does this work? Is the agent or ITN wrong, or is there more to it?

Thanks for your help.

call another agent- I did

The upgrades do not come out of the Z "bucket", they come from the "R" bucket which cannot be viewed on ITN. Z is useful to see if there is a possiblity of an R existing. NO Z typically no R. But just because they have Z seats they still might not have yet released them to R.

This is because upgradeable international inventory is not shown on ITN. CO denominates these as R class and although it frequently bears a close relationship to the Z as shown on ITN, it is far from exact and occasionally has no relationship at all. The only way that I have found to try to track the availabilities at all is to check ITN a few times a day looking for movement in the Z's on flights that had been showing J9. This movement probably signifies that the yield management gang had been doing some realignment and possibly had released some seats into the R inventory. Then you must call immediately. Does it always work? Of course not, but it is something to sort of hang your hat on and works often enough so that it is worth doing and is really only useful if your dates are somewhat flexible.
I have edited this post to explain that the duplication and repetition of cigarman's post was due to having been called away from the computer in the middle of writing the post.

[This message has been edited by monitor (edited 05-31-2001).]

Thanks for the information, just hope their are upgradable seats left.

Well the all-knowing cigarman also told me that rev management re-allocates 21, 14 and 7 days prior to the flight date. Cross your fingers and hope. Just got back from HK and I got my upgrade to Biz First, but had to wait on pins and needles until the 7 day window arrived. Like you, no UG seats available at booking. Good Luck, Biz on that flight is fabulous!!! It really puts NW WBC to shame....

Well the window thing is true...
The all knowing thing is clearly false as evidenced by my tendency to back, a rental car, into a pole at least once every two years...

Haha, hopefully not a Hertz car. #1 Club gold is fantastic, don't know what I'd do if I had to get off a 9 hour flight and then stand in line/do paperwork for 20-30 min