Question about Upgrading
 

Hey everyone,

I am completely new to continental, but they seem like quite a good airline. I have heard rave reviews from others. We will most likely be flying them on the ANC-SEA-IAH-YYZ route in July. There will be a 7 day stopover in Seattle.

Our flights are in B class.

I was looking around the CO site to see if it was possible to upgrade, and it did seem to be possible, even though we are not Elite members.

The website shows the following

I have a few questions.

i) how soon before departure can you upgrade.

ii) which fare bucket does the upgrade come from.

iii) can we upgrade all the way ANC-SEA-IAH-YYZ?

iv) is it 5,000 or 15,000 miles for a one way upgrade?

Thanks so much

Cheers,

You can ask while making your reservations whether a miles upgrade is available. If not, you can go standby for one, but the odds are against it clearing. Someone on here who regularly flies your desired routes can probably give you a better idea what your odds are (and whether your open-jaw itinerary would present any problems).

If an upgrade is available, you can go all the way from ANC to YYZ. It would be 15,000 miles, not 5,000 (that applies only to Y fares).

i) Whenever there is availability. You must be ticketed first, though.
ii) "R" class. Do a google search for KVS Availability Tool, which is a pay service that allows you to view R inventory on CO. Alternatively, CO.com lets you search for upgradeable itineraries (via a check-box), so you can use that too, but I don't think its as flexible.
iii)Generally, I think so, but I'm not sure how the stopover in SEA might impact this. You might need to call CO, though you'll probably get 4 different answers if you speak to 3 different people.
iv)15K miles. 5K miles only on Y fares.

Also, if upgds are only available on certain legs of the trip, you can still do it, you just won't get as much mileage bang for your buck. And I just noticed this yesterday after moving up to Elite (not sure if I just didn't notice before or it wasn't the before), but if there's a mileage upgd available, it should be selectable at the top of the page when you go to look up your itin on CO.com.

The odds of getting an upgd by waitlisting on this route really depends on the times of your journey and the day of the week. If you ANC-SEA-IAH seg is a really early morning flight and it's either midweek or Sat., your chances on that part of the seg are pretty good, as the B fare bucket is high up there. As for the IAH-YYZ seg, I'd say your chances probably aren't that great as that would most likely be a mid-day departure, assuming that you start around 12 or 1 AM in ANC.

And a question. When you say you're going ANC-SEA-IAH, do you have to change planes in SEA, or are you on CO223 which only stops on the ground? If you're on the latter, chances of an upgrade are pretty good, as the F cabin on that flight is pretty big, being a 753. And they are a good airline, especially since it seems you fly Emirates a lot and it seems that all fare buckets earn full EQMs on Emirates flights. Don't expect very good reward travel availabilty however. Even as an Elite, their availability stinks, unless you can be really flexible with your dates or you plan way, way in advance (although they seem to have changed their rev mgmt scheme so that a lot of reward seats don't open up until close to departure). Hope I've been helpful.

- Ben