I am taking a business trip to Los Angeles and intended to purchase an upgradable fare. According to the agent, all of first class, my outbound and return flight, is sold out. I find it very had to believe that First Class is sold out, every seat, two full months in advance. Anyone know if U is upgradable?

Did you go and look at the seat charts for those flights? Are you sure he did not say that there were no seats available for a mileage based upgrade? This is typical. CO allocates very few seats for this (especially transcon) and they go early. Certainly, I would not expect any to be left at the 60 day point.

If seats are available and you are elite, then U is upgradable, if there are seats in that bucket. If you are not elite, you need at least a B fare.

I'm not an elite so I suppose I'm out of luck this time. I'm so pissed off, anything I can do?

You can try calling CO and asking to buy a higher fare if you can upgrade (I don't think there's much of a point of spending more $ for the same Y seat). Some angents may let you do it - others will want a $100 change fee (yeah I know... paying a fee to give CO more $$$ ) As always, if you do find space and the agent will not budge on the $100 fee, hang up and call back. Best of luck! ^

This is a link to a useful chart at co.com!

http://www.continental.com/onepass/r...de/default.asp

Thanks for the advice. I will see what I can do.


It just occurred to me, I can request an exit row seat. I got one last time.

You want to see if First is sold out? Go to continental.com and try to buy it. If they offer to sell it to you there then call and get a different agent.

Are you just a hot-head?, because I really don't see why you should be so pissed off.

1) You clearly didn't do your homework on the upgrade, CO.com makes it clear that non-elite members need to purchase Y, H, K, N, or B fares to upgrade. You may be in luck, they will usually let you buy-up to a higher fare class without charging a change fee, and if you're lucky they may even let you change your flight to one where upgrade rewards are available. It's happened to me.
2) While the agent probably confused you by stating that First Class was "sold out" on your flights, when (s)he meant to say FC upgrades were unavailable, you have to remember that this is a frequent flyer reward you are looking for, and they are always capacity controlled. If you called asking for a free coach ticket for 25,000 miles, there's a good chance you would have also been told it was "sold out" too (This is CO we're talking about). You would be entitled to be upset or annoyed, but probably not "so pissed off"
3) Keep in mind that there are a lot of business travelers on NY-LA flights, many of whom are allowed by company policy to purchase First/Business tickets, and with the discounted FC tickets being available for ~$1K, they actually sell a lot of premium seats on this route. Plus demand for advanced mileage upgrade rewards is high as it's such a long flight, so any seats that may have been allocated for reward upgrades were probably taken already.

I think you probably just had unrealistic expectations as to how easy it would be to get in the front cabin without paying for it with cash. Temper them a little, try for an exit row (which you may or may not be able to get as a non-elite), and follow the advice posted here. Namely, call CO and find out if any other flights have upgrade availability and see if they'll let you purchase the higher fare and change your flight for no extra charge.

A middle seat in the exit row that does not recline is way better than First Class.

I prefer the middle seat in the last row of the plane, that does not recline. Too much legroom in the exit row.

I'm in 16F on my outbound flight. On a 737-800 that is the row behind the exit row, just my luck right. The exit row on a 757 is very nice. There is about the same amount of legroom in FC, perhaps a little less, but almost the same. Yes, I did not do my homework on this one. I should have objected when the agent said FC was full and I should have known that U is a non-upgradible fare class. Next time.

Not quite sure which aircraft you are on but it seems to be a 737-800. Rows 12 and 14 are exit rows so you are a few rows behind.

http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Con..._737-800_A.php

http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Con..._737-800_B.php