Does CO want to hide all the availability?
 

Hi Scott,
So, you're the man here. I have a couple questions. Are all the flights totally full up front now? I'm zero for six legs EUA since making silver a week or two back. I had two days for travel, out and back, for a trip this week and selected my flights after checking the seat maps, seeing that the ones I choose had plenty of open seats up front less than 24 hours before departure. Well, I ended up with 23A, a "narrow seat" (**) and 10D, a non-recline (**). I put some miles into CO because I remembered MVP on AS and Gold on NW and the EUA systems they had when I flew on them a few years back. Now with a territory realignment I thought CO might be the ticket since UA Premier and AA Plat (both earned this year) haven't given me any upgrades yet. Does CO want to hide all the availability? I had all day to travel at my convenience. Instead of sitting up front for the first EUA on CO this week I was scrunched and slouched. While I don't have the excitement of a possible upgrade on UA with each flight, at least they have E+ which beats the seats I'm getting even with the little pizza, the Milky Way candy bar, and the movie. Even one time was too many: watching "She's the Man" (**) and "Failure to Launch" for the umpteenth time has gotten real old really really fast.

**these shouldn't be allowed; they're inhuman

Your experience is far from unique.

Plenty of open seats up front 24 hours in advance doesn't really mean much. There can be reservations without seat assignments, making the cabin look more empty than it really is, or there can be seats blocked (without reservations) making the cabin look more full than it is. It's generally a bad idea to make conclusions based on a seat map. However, if there was plenty of availability in "A" class (e.g., A7) 24 hours in advance, that's just an example of CO withholding all elite upgrades, likely until 3 hours before the flight, when all A inventory gets dumped to R (soon to be F) and elite upgrades (EUA) get processed. They do this on many flights, particularly ones with a history of last-minute paid F purchases. So there were probably a number of Plats and/or Golds waiting for their upgrades as well at the time, and they have higher priority than you as Silver. CO Insider has sometimes been so kind to actually look up the info on a specific flight and share with us exactly who got upgraded and what level they were, if you really think the system scr*wed you, you can PM him.

If your move to CO was for the purposes of improving your upgrade percentage, I'd have to say, as a Silver, you will likely be severely disappointed, unless you are buying full Y fares. The main benefits of Silver are expedited security lines, pre-boarding, elite seating and the ability to upgrade any domestic fare with miles. Free upgrades happen once in a while, enjoy them when they do!

Oh, final advice -- if you've made UA Premier (not sure what level that is?), AA Plat and CO Silver all in the same year, I think you're spreading your flying among too many airlines. (Unless, as I suspect, one or more of these statuses were received as a comp/challenges.) Concentrate in one, get a higher status, and that's how you'll improve your upgrade percentage.

"wasting" miles on other airlines
 

Thanks for the good advice ij, but I can't justify spending the company's money when CO has a $600 fare and AA wants $1150 for the same route. I spend the money like it's mine, leading to "wasting" miles on other airlines. In fact, adding up the miles "wasted" this year on DL, US (flown still with AW paint), and even F9 and WN (7 points of 16 thus far, with no plan to hit 16), I'd easily have made top tier in any program. Of course, I'd have spent a bit more money to do that.
In the past 8 years I've made higher levels just by bis, including (dumb?) AS MVP Gold and NW Gold in the same year. I definitely pushed some revenue to CO this year, presuming I'd have an experience like I did on AS and NW, but now that I think about it I guess I was golden on those and not just silver. I did just discover FT a few months back, however, and I'm planning to strategize a bit more now....
:)

OK, I gotta ask this as I'm confused and it doesn't make sense the way I'm reading this. You're NW Gold and you've flown a lot on Delta this year and you just made Silver on CO? If you're NW Gold then why not use that number? If you've flown Delta and CO why not just keep using your NW World Perks Number for your flight segments? Maybe I'm not understanding here but they're all skyteam partners, why would you want NW Gold and CO Silver, just doesn't make sense.

Now that that's out of the way, welcome to Flyertalk. As far as Silver on CO depending on your city good luck getting an upgrade. Depends on how you book but if you're going deep discounted fares then these pages are full of Plat's that don't get upgrades on those fares. If you purchase Y then you can get an upgrade at time of booking on some segments.

Good luck; and for a piece of good information, my kids are silver and they get upgraded about 50% of the time when they fly (but it's not a common route).

make at least Gold, improving my chances
 

This year I'm AA PLT, UA Premier, and CO Silver, so far, all earned this year. I've "wasted" miles on the other carriers because I've always taken the miles with the carrier I'm on. Right now I have 999034 miles spread across AS, AA, DL, CO, US, NW, UA, F9, and KE, along with 7 WN points. Upgrades are worth more than miles in the bank because I never seem to get to use them ("No, no flights on those days, but you can buy a ticket" :rolleyes: ) Now I think with some time in on FT I will start to request credit on other carriers. With my current job I've had multiple territory realignments over the years. In the past I've been UA Prem. Exec, NW Gold, and AS MVP Gold. Seems like just when I make status they change my territory. :eek:

Thank you kindly! As I understand it there might be some advantage to sticking around here for some time, education-wise and, possibly, advantage-wise, maybe?; does that 90 post threshold get you something? Also, I've already seen a couple hot deals that were still open and book-able but, funny, I really don't want to pay to fly anywhere. In fact, I don't even want to go for free. In coach anyway. Now having three attractive flight attendants leaning over me at the same time in LH First Class a few years back, one offering the dessert tray, one adjusting my blanket for me, and one explaining the IFE equipment, well, that's one of highlights of my life so far! :D The airlines need more three class aircraft, even domestically; there's just no middle class: If you're upgraded you're happy; if not, you're very unhappy.

For my SNA-DTW RT this week I was on an H ticket ($769.40 with the CO MC discount). The Y ticket was hundreds more; how can I justify that? Well, I will justify it to avoid 23A. I'm never sitting in 23A again. Ever. I hope.

Unfortunately for me, SNA is pretty tough. There were ten (10) people ahead of me on the list. My options include changing to UA with a virtually guaranteed E+ seat, forgetting CO entirely, or putting some more miles into CO to make at least Gold, improving my chances. On some domestic routes AA is comparably priced and the double miles (PLT) will buy some upgrades so I have a bunch to think about and a lot more reading to do: only six and a quarter million posts to go....

I'm a little confused, too. Are you crediting all your SkyTeam trips to one FF account, ideally CO or NW. If not, if you are already silver, crediting your DL and NW trips to CO would bump you closer to Gold and maybe Plat depending on the number of miles you're "wasting" on DL and NW.

Ah sushibear.... you beat me to it as I still am not following either.

OK jtalstad, if you took your KE, DL, CO, NW flights, and put them under one account, and you pick that, say you like NW or CO or DL or KE or whatever, just pick one. Call that your main airline. Personally I think most would pick NW or CO but that's not my call for you. You pick one. They are all skyteam airline alliance, so a NW plat would get upgraded on a CO flight faster then a CO gold would. A CO Plat would get upgraded on a NW flight faster then a NW gold, etc....

Let's say you choose CO. When you check in for the KE flight / book it you use your CO onepass number. When you check in for the DL flight / book it, use your CO onepass number. When you check in for the NW flight / book it, use your CO onepass number.

That way all your miles are going into one account. I know you said the miles don't matter but the upgrades do, but this way you get all your miles EQM's, going into one account for all four airlines so you can make Gold or Plat faster. It does no good to have status on CO and NW and DL etc... Unless you're flying 150,000 EQM's each year on both CO and NW or whatever but even then I'd still only pick one airline.

Also the miles you will get accumulated under your CO account for flying on DL or NW or whatever, you can get and use your miles on those airlines also.

So I still am not following your logic here. If you complain about being a lowly Silver on CO and not getting upgrades and want status on a SkyTeam then funnel everything to one card and you'll get it.

How does one book these new R fares? I'm looking at booking AUS-TLV and return next March. KVS shows R4 for all segments but only Z and D fares are coming up on co.com. If I try to force it to book R class I get a message that that is an invalid fare class.

Of course, I'm assuming a R fare would be the cheapest. Maybe not.

Thank you KosraeTV and sushibear!
I'm going to do as you suggest. I'm still deciding on a main airline and now, this week, the company I work for was acquired so, again, just as I've made status on three carriers, I expect a territory realignment or, maybe, I'll have a position in the new company that won't involve travel anymore. Just a comment: I distinctly remember years back a NW GA (who recognized me since I was such a regular at MSP) giving me a wink and putting me up front over some CO heavy flyers; it seems they gave preference to their own FFers. I'm working over to the alliance posts in FT pretty soon.... It's a ton of research to figure all this out and my FlyerTalk pages don't load fast, adding a 3-5 second delay after loading the the Aloha or National ad at the top and the main header before following with the page contents; is that typical for everyone or should I investigate a computer issue on my side? :confused:

This comes up quite frequently here. Fare class and inventory class are two separate things. Just because there is "R" inventory doesn't mean there will be a published "R" fare (and of course, just because there is a published "R" fare doesn't mean that there will be availability on any given flight!). In fact, on AUS-TLV in March, the only published fares are Q, V, B, H, Z, Y, J and D. If you tried to force CO.com to book, say, a "K" fare, you'd get the same error message. There may be published "R" fare classes on flights to TLV from other cities, though a spot-check of a few did not reveal any (BOS/EWR/LAX/MIA-TLV). They might not have gotten around to publishing any R fares to TLV, or even any R fares anywhere yet. One step at a time.

which flight offers the best chance for an upgrade tomorrow
 

I'd like to know which flight offers the best chance for an upgrade tomorrow (22 August) SNA-DTW returning Thursday DTW-SNA (24 August). I have all day to travel on both days. My preference would be mid morning on Tuesday returning on the second to the last flight (to make sure I get home!) on Thursday but I'll go a different time to avoid coach and especially avoid a non-recline seat or a narrower than normal seat. I'm buying a refundable ticket so if I'm assigned those seats I'm not flying. I did download the KVS availability software but I need an activation code to use it read that the author is out of town and I have to wait a bit. Is there another availability software? or, if it's quick and easy to check, well, Thanks in advance for a PM....

Hi There:
Sorry to resurrect an old thread. Let's say I'm a Silver, I have a flight on a Saturday, I stay up late Thursday night, and Friday at 12:01am there's R availability. Can I call CO and have my upgrade manually processed, beating out EUA?

Absolutely not. Agents haven't processed upgrades since the EUA system began. The reason you can't call to manually be EUA'd is because the computer decides who gets the remaining R seats based on status and fare class paid. Just because the silver window opens and there is R availability doesn't mean you can just call and take the seat - there might be other silvers with higher fares ahead of you, and the system is designed to process it automatically.

HOWEVER, if you see 'R' availability, you can call and use miles from your account to upgrade. They will be happy to process this.

What is R class?
 

With the base mileage for a F/BF ticket falling to 100% from 150% (although points will remain the same), can one assume R is simply going to be a very discounted J ticket ....or is it too much wishful thinking that R is going to become a new instantly upgraded Y to BF for elites similar to how the AU's work domestically?

The miles earned for Y/R travel are identical come 2008, so I hope this is a precursor to an actual program change for the better for next year. :D