With the new Online check-in you can check in for your flight before the final EUA run at 3 hours prior to departure.

Has anyone checked in without an upgrade and still gotten the EUA? Did you find out at the gate or on the plane? Does the online check-in mean the EUA skips your record and you must wait to be saved at the gate? If the old rules still apply the earliest check-in is the deciding factor (within elite tier) for upgrades at the gate, if so, online check-in could have an advantage.

Now that I'm lowly gold (and fly cheap fares) EUA never doesn't do much for me anymore, but I was wondering what the pros/cons were for checking in online or waiting for EUA.

I think the 3 hour EUA may be officially dead. Instead, revenue management is holding back "A" (first class revenue) seats until the very last minute.

My strategy is to check in on line at 30 hours before the flight and hope for the best when I get to the gate. Does it really help? It should, and probably does not hurt.

July 4th weekend Mrs Keba and I flew EWR-SFO-EWR as golds and received upgrades on both. Thankfully there were not to many Buisness passengers taking the "A" seats.

EWR-SFO was A8F0 for weeks before the flight and upgrades were not processed until about *10-15* minutes before departure.

SFO-EWR was A9F0 and upgrades were processed about 50 minutes before departure.

What do other FTers do when upgrades have not been processed and boarding has already begun? Do you take the seat in Y and hope for the battlefield or do you hover around the desk and hope?

Keba

As a Silver with a handful of EUA emails sitting in my inbox from last week, I really don't understand when I hear people say stuff like this. Are you flying some really competitive routes or something?

It depends:

1)If the flight is packed and I need to stow my carry-on(s), I will board ASAP.

2)Length of the flight, on short flights it is not *really* worth sweating.

3)Time of day, I normally don't drink alcohol on those 6:00am flights.

4) Business or pleasure, I will have an eye-opener most any time on my own time.

Once I upgraded a business associate with a coupon on NW. The front was full, coach had maybe 12 pax. He was kind enough to point out to me he would have had more room in the back.

SunLover

I didn't receive an EUA on my saturday cle-iah plane until after I was in the air on the first leg of my trip. I didn't find out about my upgrade until I boarded & found someone in my 9A seat. the crew were very nice about letting me hang out in first until they found out who had 9A (the other person) & told me I had seat 4A.

when I got home that night, I re-checked my email, & there was the EUA. It hadn't been there the day before, nor was I upgraded when I checked in at sea.

DG

I always wait until the very last minute to board. I HATE getting settled in Y (not that I have to too much, but if I change a flight or something), and then hope that the GA's feel like processing the battlefield u/g's. I have sat in Y at least twice when there were empty FC seats!

K


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...here's my 10 cents, my 2 cents are free....

-Eminem

i wait until the last minute to board as well, especially if i am in coach.

as for the EUA, i have NEVER received an email even though i was upgraded (and i am upgraded about 70% of the time). and yes, i do have my email address in my OP profile.

The 3-hour EUA is definetly not dead. On my ATL-EWR flight yesterday, ITN showed A2F0 before I left for the airport. By the time I arrived at the airport, my blackberry showed a nice EUA message from CO. I have found absolutely no rhyme or reason to when upgrades are held back until departure versus when EUA works its magic prior to departure.

Channa,

Everything out of EWR is EXTREMELY competitive when it comes to CO. I do fly LAX, SFO, ORD, BOS, DCA quite a bit. I don't care about BOS and DCA (too short) but it amazes me that I never got an upgrade on either route.

I got denied both ways EWR-FLL-EWR two weeks ago. I wouldn't call that a big business route.

Ok -- I just got upgraded on the SFO-EWR redeye tonight. That makes me 1-4 so far in July. Not really staggering stats. I'm happy to get an exit row most of the time.

Going from PBI to EWR for the first time as a silver elite, I was really not expecting an upgrade to first after reading all the comments on this board about upgrade percentages. I received an e-mail stating my one pass elite upgrade had been processed. Once boarded, I was shocked that the plane appeared full but there were four empty first class seats! On the return, we were on a 757-200 with BF configuration. Again, the flight appeared full. I received the e-mail once again about the upgrade for the return flight. There were eight empty FC seats! I kept thinking "there can't possibly be no other elites on this plane". Is it common for that many seats to be left empty in FC? Just curious.

traveler4ever:
I agree that its virtually impoossible for there not to have been other elites on the plane. If CO really is holding back loads of seats until the last minute, it is very likely that the gate agents are too busy/lazy to process last minute upgrades and the CO elites are not getting the benefits they should.

My last flight to LAX (from EWR) on a Friday evening had about 6 people upgraded after we had settled down in coach. On the return red-eye my wife had the same situation and was upgraded to a BF seat after having sat down in coach. Each time we had checked in on Co.com about six hours ahead of departure. The GA at EWR wanted to make sure everyone at the gate had boarded 15 mins prior to departure, and then processed upgrades while we were inside the aircraft.

Last minute availability seems to be the situation of upgrade inventory these days.

Say you are an elite sitting in coach. The plane takes off and you notice eight empty fc seats. Would it help at all to ask a FA why you weren't upgraded at the gate? When you land, do you complain? I know the next time I fly, (next week)if I do not receive the e-mail stating that an upgrade was processed and there are eight empty FC seats on the plane, I will complain to someone!

Sounds like things are much worse out of EWR than IAH. I've had very good success as a Gold on most of my trips, except LAS (although I think online check-in would help my cause now). I'm sure trips to EWR would be sketchy, but I generally do one day turnarounds and AU into first.

Regarding empty F seats, I was on a recent flight from DFW-IAH (granted, a short one) and we had two empty seats in F. This was strange since seats are not held back from inventory on this route. Once we were in the air, a passenger came up to the front, showed his elite card and BP to the FA and she let him finish up the flight up front. He probably just wanted a drink, but it was surprising nonetheless. I'm assuming his OP number wasn't in his record properly. I wonder if this might work on all flights?

When you land, do you complain.
I'm not sure where you would get any results from complaining. My suugestion would be to write a nice letter to Larry Kellner, the President. He seem to genuinely care and has been known to call FTers personally. This letter might be a good opportunity to mention the apprarent (in some cases) ending of the 3 hour EUA dump. I would not be surprised if these two issues were related. Given what is going on inside CO, I would also not be surprised if he did NOT know about the perceived changes in EUA.
Edited to add: as of 10:20 AM, CO148, EWR-SFO at 12:10 (1 hour and 50 minutes from now, reads A9F0 on etour).

[This message has been edited by Vulcan (edited 07-09-2003).]