EUA Shenanigans...1 Stop, Direct Flights
 

Another frustrating EUA experience in the making...
I'm flying "direct" from PHX to LGA today with a stop in IAH (same flight number, less OnePass miles, and fewer segments...) and the IAH-LGA segment is oversold (A6 D4 F0) but the PHX-IAH segment has F seats available (A6 D4 F4). My upgrade didn't process because "the whole flight has to clear on a direct flight or nothing clears"

I inquired as to why, but was blown off and told that it would "inconvience me" if I was in F for the first segment and coach the rest of the way...I eventually got the agent to explain that the computer doesn't allow for those segments to be separated and therefore couldn't process the flight partially in F and partially in Y--with the hope of getting the rest of the upgrade later.

She tried to manually separate the flight into two segments, but the computer wouldn't let her resell the connection with the same flight number.

Why has CO taken all power away from its agents (including this supposed supervisor) and given it to a computer that is missing a few lines from having the program correct?

I just avoid "direct" flights since I've become wise to the term. Lesser miles/ segments for greater inconveinence. Who wants to deal with that!?

In the old days, before the new fangled EUA's there was no problem with getting partial upgrades, you still got screwed on the total mileage, though.

One thing about "direct" flights, you can get extra mileage if your flight is delayed and "leaves before it arrives" when there's an unscheduled change of aircraft. Last year my wife got credit for MSY-TUS as well as IAH-LAS and LAS-TUS. The TUS and LAS flights were in the air at the same time.

In my opinion the practice of assigning the same flight number to more then one plane is fraud, and should be prohibited.

Exactly how would it have helped your wife for CO to have assigned different flight numbers to the MSY-IAH and IAH-TUS flights? Fraud? Gimme a break!

JS: The practice of assigning the same flight number to a different connecting aircraft is done for marketing reasons, i.e. a direct flight will be listed on the computer reservation systems before a connecting flight, giving the connecting flights a competitive advantage over competing connecting flights.

Some years ago some airlines would assign the same number to more then one flight connecting with an international flight with, yes, the same number! ATC, of course, doesn't permit 2 flights with the same number in the air at the same time, so the aircraft are assigned different numbers for that purpose.

I never said it would have helped my wife, but having been in the position in the past of trying to arrange transportation on real "direct" flights for elderly relatives it's a very sore point for me.

Just got back to NYC--here's the deal (as official as it gets from CO these days)
basically, the newest EUA enhancement (the "hub supervisor" in IAH used that word at least a half dozen times) is that EUA plain doesn't work for direct flights yet.
On the first segment, you get the upgrade if you clear both segments, but can't be upgraded in advance or via the at the airport computer b/c the system doesn't recognize you as being on the segment that is the first half of the flight.
You can't even be listed for the second segment at this point. The old process of listing for the second half doesn't work anymore.
The great part of my flights today were that I was told by no less than 4 different CO employees that I was on a waitlist for a first class seat--once for the original waitlist in PHX, once when I "didn't clear" for the upgrade at the gate (as I watched a silver clear), a second time at the gate when the agent apologized and said he couldn't figure out who told me I was on a waitlist, but would call ahead to IAH to waitlist me there, and then finally at IAH when I was told I was being waitlisted for the IAH to LGA segment. The "hub supervisor" finally let me know that none of this had occurred.
I may have lost the battles on these flights, but I won the war--the IAH to LGA segment was oversold, so CO bumped me to the next LGA flight 55 minutes later, put me in first on the next flight, and gave me $300 in travel vouchers...