I'm traveling (Gold with non-Elite companion, split records) LGA-IAH on Wednesday evening (CO233). I fully realize it's not exactly the kind of route where you can count on an upgrade, but a few days ago it was looking good - a handful of seats available up front, and none in Y, suggesting there might be a fair chance of getting either an upgrade or a bump voucher. Today, however, it says A0 F0 Y9 H9 K9 B9. Not, I fear, because they've upgraded the Elites (not me, at least). Why does this sort of thing happen? Have they just upgraded half a dozen sky marshalls?

It is possible that a lot of plats got upgraded. Also, albeit probably unrelated, NYC area hotels are extremely full this week, especially those that cater to business travelers on negotiated rates. There just might be a lot of business travelers up there this week sucking up all the rooms and upgrades.

NYC might be full because of folks in town for last Sunday's NYC marathon.

I can believe that. Funny though how in that case, in spite of all the postings about Continental's recent tendency to save all upgrading until the last minute, they have given them all away this time. If you try to book this flight on Travelocity in First you get zilch, whereas there are seats available for purchase in Economy.

I don't purport to understand how CO revenue management works, but I would venture that F seats are available for booking into EWR if someone really needs to fly F into NYC at that time.

If it is A0 F0 Y9 H9 K9 B9 then you will not be able to buy a first class ticket no matter how much you are willing to pay. But in my experience, some funky things happen to the A bucket as flight time approaches.

Last Thursday I was contemplating a change from my 3:55pm departure for EWR from LAX to the 12:45pm but when I checked at 10am and again at 10:45am there were no A seats available (I was on a full Y fare and did not want to move to the earlier flight if it meant sitting in the back).
I had resigned myself to taking the later flight but then thought I'd check the fare buckets throughout the 2 hour pre-flight window for kicks to see if things shifted around at all. Since I am 38 miles from LAX once 10:45am passed, I figured that the earlier flight was no longer an option so I did my on-line check in (I was already in first for the late flight but like to use on-line check-in since I sometimes cut it a little close to the 30 minute cut-off for front of airport check-in). Well sure enough at 11am the flight shows A1! So strange things do happen!

To finish my story...
I looked the traffic report website and it showed clear sailing to LAX from Burbank so I rolled the dice and called the Platinum desk. They put me on hold for 10 minutes as they had to "check me out" of the 3:55 flight. They came back on and I was now in a panic as I had about 1 and a half hours to drive 38 miles, return a car, shuttle to Terminal 6 (w/4 stops at terms 1-5), clear security and get to the gate before it closed (and since I gave up my F seat on the 3:55pm, I may have to sit in the back as that now showed A0). So I took about 1 minute to try to check-in on line for the earlier flight after the agent assured me that I could- but it didn't work. So I shut down my laptop and ran out the door at 11:20am. After all my speedy driving and good rental car process, I walked through the door of terminal 6 at 12:20pm. Luckily I saved my printed out boarding pass from the 3:55pm flight (so no worries about the 30 minute rule), breezed through security and had a Heineken in my hand in 3A by 12:32pm (and lots of sweat on my brow). I have to start taking a more relaxed pace!!!

Platinum desk....what's that?


K