Should have been more precise. They will see upgrades at the check-in counter, but I guess I don't know about the gate. I have done it myself during the past year.

1) What are these sales-issued upgrade vouchers
2) How does one get them
3) How did they apparently get into the hands of people who seemed clearly confused why they were upgraded - if they had the vouchers, surely they would know how to use them and expected the upgrade, not be surprised by it

1. Sales Managers have these vouchers to reward travel agencies that book alot of business on CO
2. See Nbr 1
3. Once the travel agency receives them, they can give them to anyone they wish to. For the most part I rarely upgrade those with these types of certificates since they are on the bottom of the upgrade list.

this has been discussed ad nauseum. those are the breaks. that is just the way CO does it....like it or lump it.

(i still don't really understand the point of the original post.)

Maybe there are some missing facts here and maybe not. A half full BF cabin has nothing to do with maintaining "integrity" of the BF product, without more facts is is failure of CO to deliver a benefit that should be available to a passenger who was willing to pay for the benefit.

Unless there is some reason here like a number of phantom reservations or some other reason, incidents like this are the reason that I have moved all of my long distance foreign travel to AA. I don't miss upgrades and AA gives me VIPOWs to boot. CO works fine for me on some routes not so well on others. But when I have to go to South America, its AA all the way. A benefit that is not available in circumstances like these is a teaser, but not a real benefit at all. The last minutes upgraders here just add insult to injury.

So maybe Scott will have a reason for the BF cabin going out half full while the OP's spouse, willing to pay with miles and $$$, sits in coach. I believe this issue is a whole lot more important matter than a gate agent allowing a seat to go empty in F and a Silver sit in coach on a domestic segment, a matter which has prompted many complaint threads in this forum. Surely there has to be some reason better than mere whim and caprice in the revenue dept at CO.

CO has been allowing BF cabins to go out with empty seats for long long time, with people on upgrade waitlist. Everybody here knows it, CO knows it, there are dozens of threads on this forum about it. That should change with the upcoming policy change with same day clearing of waitlist.

By itself, there's nothing to investigate or explain.

But whether that other party was doing phantom booking, etc, is another issue. Maybe CO will try to find out what's happening, maybe not.

I disagree. A few seats going out empty, well thems the breaks. This many seats, well they might as well drop the BF upgrade benefit from One Pass. IIRC the "dozens of threads" do not deal with a half full BF cabin.

I just don't understand why CO Insider would want to know about a single domestic F seat going empty while a disappointed Silver who wants a free upgrade sits in coach and at the same time would be uninterested in finding out why a half full BF cabin departs while the OP's spouse was willing to spend $$ and miles sits in coach. Seems particularly backwards to me. Absent some reason under these circumstances, I'll chalk it up to whim, caprice and an illusory, largely unattainable benefit. I am not taking about threads which refer to one or even a few seats going empty. The OP's circumstances WERE different.

I only fly BF on R fares so this implies flying in the "off season." With this type of flying I have never seen a BF cabin more than half full.

I long ago gave up attempting to find BF award inventory.

I, for one, am glad upgrades on BF are very hard to come by.

you can certainly hope scott will respond....but, given his track record on what he discusses publicly and what he doesn't, i wouldn't hold my breath. the OP might want to take the issue offline with customer care.

Good for you. The question I have, though, is if one is happy to always pay for the front cabin, then why would they care about FF programs at all? You get the same service and benefits in BF as a first-timer as you would were you Plat, so there is no benefit in worrying about miles if you don't intend to use them for upgrades or awards.

Also, I'm not sure we don't need a bit more information, regarding your contention. What programs that have more generous upgrade programs do you think are inferior? And what about those biz classes is it that you think is inferior? Is this inferiority reasonably linked to upgrade success? For example, I think BA is at least as good as CO in J, yet they would seem to upgrade many more people. On the flip-side, that I think LX C on an A330 is worse than CO is because the seat is a complete piece of c**p, and not because they upgrade too many people (though I don't know how much they do upgrade).

My goal on CO is to maintain Silver only for Y fare -> AU on domestic flights. That is all I need.

You're trying to paint a picture that I drew a correlation that I simply did not.

No problem. Am I to take it, then, that you are only opposed to them simply to keep the cabin more open for buying BF seats or increasing the chances of an empty cabin? I guess I can understand that, even if I don't share the view.

Exactly.

I share the OP�s frustration with the BF upgrade process. I am flying from Berlin to EWR on Jan 13. BF is wide open. I am trying to upgrade with miles and a $450 fee. I have called twice to see what is going on and both times I get a very nebulous answer. I am a 100K+ platinum member and most times pay for BF but could not on this particular trip due to a quirky corp. travel policy.

It is anyone�s guess if I will be upgraded, but I must say if would really piss me off if a bunch of sales coupon holders got upgraded at the gate.