rkkwan

I don't know about your chance. TLV routes are often full with paid customers in BF.

For your husband, if his account has already been deducted 100,000 miles, he's already on Plan B. Nothing else he can do but wait, hope and pray.

"Plan B" is only for awards that use miles only. It does not apply to you, who're on mileage upgrade.

friedablass

Hi! I had wanted to thank you immediately for your response, but did not get around to it. Now that I have another question I finally was able to do so!!
Here's the question: I have been finally been cleared for an upgrade on the return flight (as you will remember I purchased an economy ticket and used miles for upgrade), however, my husband who is on an all mileage ticket is still waitlisted. I was originally told by continental that the list clears by elite status first and then by order of request - my husband was on the list for a couple of days before I even requested my own upgrade. When I called continental now, the rep. told me that what I was told about the order of clearing the waitlist was not true. In any case, what do we do to put my husband on standby the day of departure in case my husband doesn't get cleared 24 hours prior to departure?
I really appreciate all the help we can receive in this area as I really want us both to fly in business together.
Thanks.

rkkwan

J.Edward explained the process very clearly with step by step instructions what to do at the airport in Post #1 at the top of this very thread. Re-read it. Memorize it. Print it out...

friedablass

Thanks. Just one more question: Can you do plan B if you do not have elite status, or is it only for elites?

J.Edward

It may help you to think of the upgrade process and the reward ticket process as being completely different than each other...admittedly many of the terms and phrasing are the same but the two process are fundamentally different.

Your husband should be on a waitlist for a standard J reward seat. The 'eliteness' of your husband will be determined by the account that provided the miles and disregard any status held by your husband (or at least I think that's the way it works.)

Thus in turn if the miles for your husband came from a Plat account, he will be considered a Plat for the purposes of waitlisting regardless of the elite status of your husband.

If there are multiple people waitlisting for a standard J reward than the computer will first look to see the status of the various people (again based on the status of the funding OnePass account) followed by the time the person was placed on the waitlist.

You have to alert the ground staff of your situation. Be sure to read the initial posting and follow the tips therein (e.g. don't mention the word upgrade and explain how the hubby is a displaced J customer). If the ground staff balks be sure to have the reference codes so they can read up the correct policy.

Good luck!

J.Edward

I *think* anyone can do it as long as the are using OnePass miles (DL & NW miles won't work IIRC.)

friedablass

Once again, I appreciate your help. The onepass account that was used to get my husbands ticket does not have elite status (since the mileage was primearily from using the chase onepass credit card which does not count towards elite status). But, from your previous answer, I see that you believe that plan B can still be done for non-elites. I will definitely print out post #1 to be used in case of emergency!
Another question: Since I am pretty new to flyertalk, I don't understand what a standard J reward is. On the flight segment that my husband is being waitlisted on it says Fare Class: BusinessFirst (E). Please clarify.
Thanks.

craz

DL it takes 140k for the BF CO to TLV, NW might be the same. Tried doing this a yr ago and seems ST agreed with CO to view BF as F. what will happen when DL gets its BE as all lie-flats we have to wait and see

J.Edward

No worries -- it's confusing.

As a customer I know of three ways to find myself sitting in a BF seat.

1. Purchase a J fare (i.e. buy a BusinessFirst (BF) ticket...J = common slang if you will for a BF seat)
2. Purchase a Y fare and then use miles to upgrade (just as J denotes a BF ticket, Y denotes an economy ticket)
3. Redeem a BF reward with miles

That said while every BF seat is the same CO employees many 'subclasses' (or fare buckets) to help with inventory control.

In the case of paid BF the classes are as follows (from most expensive to least expensive): J, D, Z, R

For example if I were to buy a BF ticket there are several options of subclasses I can book into depending upon what I want. If I want a fully flexible and refundable ticket I would book in J - as J is the 'master' BF class. Likewise if I wanted a cheap BF ticket and did not care about being able to change it or refund it I might book into the Z or R classes.

Just as there are paid fare buckets there are also reward fare buckets.

For upgrades the fare bucket is F and for rewards the fare bucket is E (or in some special cases EN...but this does not apply to your situation).

Anyways the airline will want to sell as many paid tickets as possible and will only release a certain number of seats for upgrades or rewards. In your example you used miles to upgrade (thus you needed an BF seat to be released into the F fare bucket) and your hubby needs a seat in the 'E' fare bucket in order for him to clear the waitlist.

Just because CO releases a seat to the F bucket (for upgrades) does not mean that same seat will also be released to the E bucket (for rewards)...or vice versa.

Likewise the waitlist for the F bucket (upgrades) is kept separate E bucket (rewards). However the cool thing about Plan B (using a reward that is) is the customer can standby for the front cabin after the 24 hour mark...something upgraders cannot do.

Hope that helps.

friedablass

Yes, that helped a lot. Thanks so much.
When I called continental, the rep. did tell me that there are 3 types of ways of getting BF seats - exactly what you said. She also told me that if a reward seat does not clear within 24 hours of departure, there is still a possibility of BF seats flying empty since they may have been in the 'cash seats' category and nobody bought them with money - so even if nobody bought them they wouldn't all of a sudden be available for a person on a reward waitlist and it would remain empty. Is that true? And if so, is this where Plan B works?

craz

That is Exactly where and when Plan B should be put into action.

Now getting them to acknowledge this at TLV might not be so easy

J E is there a way to have 1P make a note on the PNR that Plan B as we call it is Legit and that TLV (or any other station) should therefore go ahead and place the passenger into BF as they are a displaced BF passenger and its Not an upgrade. I feel if someway we can get such a note placed onto the PNR it would make it alot easier to accomplish

senatorgirth

This would seem to be a really good idea. Given the complexity of Plan B, and the likely lack of familiarity about it among gate agents, it is not at all hard to imagine that agents could give passengers the complete brush off without some "flag" somewhere in the record. This could potentially benefit both agent and passenger.

eyal

Was anyone able to confirm this? I am facing a similar situation. I have confirmed J on DL on the outbound, and only standard Y availale on CO on the return.

Ilove2fly

The Plan B was explained to me by a CO agent recently. It appears to be fairly well understood by the elite line agents. Because CO can only waitlist you for CO metal, Plan B is limited to CO flights. You can have reservations on any partner flights but the waitlist for BF can only be on CO flights. The same agent also told me that the mileage upgrade waitlist clears before the reward upgrade waitlist.

friedablass

Did the agent tell you the exact wording to use when approaching a continental check-in or gate concierge? Also, does anyone know the code to tell them for a tlv-ewr flight?
I can confirm that the upgrade waitlist clears before the reward waitlist - I just had that experience where I cleared first on the upgrade waitlist while my husband is still "waiting" and he went onto the waiting list a couple of days before me.
I also had a weird experience regarding my return upgrade. I was waitlisted on the 10th of November and cleared a week later. Today I checked my reservation and saw that my upgrade was gone, and I was seated back in economy - the 30k miles were not given back and I was charged the fee. I called CO and was told my travel agent (Expedia) cancelled!! It's just so weird to me that something like that would be done by Expedia - I could not believe it!! When CO realized this was some type of error, they agreed to help me, but all they were able to do was put me back on the waitlist. Now I have to be in suspense all over again!!