I tell you what. As long as it does not matter, Continental will be issuing a press release saying that EUA has been further improved, and now Platinum elite's can get their automatic upgrade 15 days in advance of travel. This will be followed by a further "enhancement" of 30 day upgrade windows.

As some have said here better than I, it is the worst of deceptive business practices to sell you something they don't have, and then reduce the price on it. THEY DON'T HAVE THE SEATS FOR YOU! Their offer of giving it to you automatically is usually a lie, as they are purposely not making them available.

This time it was not me who was checking ITN, but others. The truth is right there, you just have to allow yourself to see it.

I just checked the FC availability for my 2/26 BWI-TUS flights, it went from A9 F8 yesterday to A9 F3 today. I'll probably score as a Platinum tonight, but the Golds and Silvers will probably have to wait it out until at the airport on the day of departure.

I don't care if EUA ran 45 minutes before flight time David....as long as my "arse" is not in the back and I am on a non-stop flight that is maximizing my time at home. Timing is not my concern(and I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way)...the end result IS.

[This message has been edited by IM4Travel (edited 02-20-2002).]

but...I'll give you this....if my "arse" starts sitting in the back...I WILL be exploring all options...until then..it's still CO for me.

Really, people - who cares when seats are dumped from A to F and EUA processed, as long as it happens before airport check-in, and the fairness "rules" implemented by EUA (i.e., upgrade priorities) are not circumvented.

I understand being pissed off when the dump happens at the last minute and silvers who get to the airport 3 hours early upgrade over plts who get there later. But is this a frequent occurence? I think all CO needs to do is carry over the EUA "waitlist" to the airport.

Of course, holding A seats until the last minute does give a full-fare pax opportunity to slip in, but maybe that's how it should be.

2001 Elite Status: --
2002 Elite Mileage Balance:0
2002 Elite Mileage Segments:0
Last Flight: 10/05/2000
2002 Elite Status on Northwest: 26,589

ijgordon: i agree. i am plat. and never have problem with upgrades. i just think this is the most bitter forum on flyertalk.com

go to the starwood forum and you will see topic titles like "I LOVE STARWOOD!" haven't seen too many of those here. this is just a very very bitter forum. it's one complaint after another.

i am also plat. on AA and American's board is nicer than this one as well.

JMHO (just my humble opinion).

I am plat and have only flown about 3500 miles so far this year. Last year at this time I had probably done at least 15,000. Although I hate the new HoKeY rules, the primary reason is that I don't find Continental's fares as competitive as they used to be. My flying is almost exclusively leisure so if the fares aren't good I stay home or fly someone else. Their weekend specials in particular are lame when compared to what American offers.

CO brought it all on themselves with their hateful, crazy international upgrade policies, strange domestic upgrade EUA, and all their fare hikes over the last 3 or so years.

Unfortunately, there are maturity, common sense, and knowledge issues with certain posters in this forum. Perhaps when these issues are resolved, this forum will return to the informative place it once was.

For what it's worth, I'm at 100% EUA this year and don't really care if my flight in two days is A9F0 as long as I get the seat, which I most likely will.

Sure, it'd be nice to get instantly confirmed or an EUA way out, but it doesn't always happen and it's easy to rest assured that there aren't enough people with higher status than you or that booked their flights ahead of you.

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daniel baker -- [email protected]
Reliable, fast, and unmoderated forums at ITYT.

Hey Yanks....

You have rightfully pointed out the negative tone to the OnePass forum. But have you ever stopped and wondered why? Lets face it, the critcism is pretty darn consistent, don't you think it might justified? Nobody on here has been able to justify HoKeY, elimination of the 20K off peak reward, BendForward fares, empty F buckets on empty airplanes, EUA inconsistencies, and CO's Platinum giveaways. However, nobody has disputed the common statement that the DOMESTIC upgrade policy on CO and NW is among the most generous in the world. you don't like the tone of the forum, then dispute fact with fact on the issues we bring up here about OnePass.

C'mon Yanks, bring it on! Dispute fact with fact! If you can best us, I'll be the first one to step up and admit that you are correct. But all you seem to do is post about the "negative tone", or the fact that 99% of us here can figure out abbreviations. But until you decide to take issue with the message rather than the messengers, you don't have a leg to stand on!



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Bad Gordon!

No Freddie for you!

I completely understand why CO is doing what it is doing across the board. Revenue enhancement is the primary goal at the moment both in the short term and on the long term. It might even be a survival issue and not greed as some have suggested.

The fairly recent set of strategies is going to affect a segment of their customers that regardless of how much they fly are not the ones targetted as the ones to best satisfy CO's revenue needs (for example, 75K/year W and T fare only fliers). They need to encourage high-fare paying customers to fly and continue to fly CO.

One way to do this is to give them perks (regardless of their mileage history) when they pay more (and not just full fare). If I was in their shoes, I would look at the Elite upgrade list and order them based on fares paid. I would release seats into F's only to accommodate the top 2 or 3 fare categories and hold on to others (why upgrade T fares for example) until higher fare elites came in. If there were none at boarding time, I would provide some discretion to the gate attendants to reward "good" prospects for future flights. They can do this without changing the "program rules". Of course, this goes counter to the spirit of EUA but desperate times call for desperate measures.

I think the only thing objectionable in CO's strategies so far, and what made me give up on CO last year, is one of "false advertising". While they carry out the strategy to maximize revenue that is bound to piss people off, they want to keep those people in CO with what amounts to deceptive advertising in my books. It is perhaps this that irritates people like NJDavid.

Reminds me of Ford Motor Co. in the late 80s when it was reeling from the quality issues compared to imports. At first, marketing tried to solve the problem with "Quality is Job 1" slogans. If enough people believed it and bought into it, it wouldn't really be necessary to spend money improve quality or improve it slowly. The people that were already sympathetic to Ford wouldn't desert in numbers due to existing sentiments atthe time.

CO is doing a similar delicate balancing act. I will be watching with amusement at the result. Meanwhile, some other carrier better serves my needs. No need to get bitter about any of these things.

If they win the Freddies this year, it will be a marketing triumph but not a deserved win, in my opinion.

For those of you worried about Silvers out-upgrading Plat's at check-in, just buy a couple bogus first class refundable seats (under different names) for the flights that you are on. These seats will not be released until 20 minutes before departure, and then, as a platinum, you will slip into them.

Also: I think the people who really get screwed under the new holdback policy are Silver's flying on Y-class tickets. My understanding is that once a Silver is at the check-in counter, his Y-class ticket doesn't count for crap. Is this correct?

Venk:

I agree. In fact, I think a plausible case could be made for Elite levels being awarded based on revenue, not just miles and segments. However, I don't see any evidence of CO distinguishing Elites based on fare basis. The Hokey restrictions, Off-Peak elimination lie, general trend re: reductions in reward availability have applied without regard for a customer's fare basis paid into CO throughout the years. At least this Y fare customer hasn't seen it. To my knowledge, I have received no "special" treatment from any other Plat - even though over the last 3.5 years 92% of my fares have been Y or YA3. The only exception to that is comping to Elite levels.

Good points, though.