This is a little late, but I've been on vacation and am only now getting round to getting my complaints in order

Mr. ElkeNorEast and I were booked on Continental 4 IAH-LGW on Sunday November 18th. I was booked into BF because I'm rather largely pregnant, and my hubby was booked in Y. He decided at the last minute (ok well two days out) that he wanted to ride up front too, and so I called and put him on the BF waitlist.

At T24 he had not cleared, and BF grayed out as full. When I did online checkin I couldn't change my seat, so I assumed that they had filled the cabin. Boy was I wrong! When we boarded on Sunday the cabin was only about 1/2 full, and the seat next to me was empty. In fact, it appeared that if you were traveling alone you had an empty seat next to you.

Something quite interesting to note was that as I was boarding there was a group of ~ 6 British young men & women who were upgraded at the gate. They were very excited to have received an upgrade, and as they boarded they carried boarding cards for seats like 38J AND 1A. They were in their early 20's and made remarks that made it seem they didn't fly CO regularly - and they did not strike me as seasoned travelers, although I could be wrong.

While at the gate, and noting that six folks had received gate upgrades and that the cabin was 1/2 full, I asked the FA if the cabin had checked in full. She said no, the cabin was 1/2 empty; I mentioned that my husband had been waitlisted but had not cleared at T24, and asked if perhaps they were upgrading mileage waitlisters at the gate since they were so light. She was great, responded that we should ask the CSD right away, and we both took off to find him. This is where I got REALLY mad.

She went up one side of the plane, I went up the other; the CSD, whose first initial is G, was by the boarding door (mid BF cabin). She walked up to him and asked him if they were still clearing the waitlist. "What? We DO NOT waitlist for BF, no no no no no. Un-uhn, where is she? I'll tell her!" Now, I was standing right in front of him (behind another FA though, so he did not register my presence). His tone was extremely rude, he got a "dog just poohed in my shoe" look on his face, and acted like she and I were both as stupid as can be. He started down towards my seat in the aisle that I was not in; I dashed back (as fast as I could) and sat down.

Sweet as pie he came up and introduced himself to me, and said "I'm sorry ma'am, but we do not waitlist for BF." Having just witnessed his extremely inappropriate response, I countered "Yes you do. My husband was on it and didn't clear at 24 hours, but I saw 6 people upgraded at the gate and wondered if perhaps you were still upgrading waitlisted folks. That's what I asked the FA." "Ma'am, I assure you, I have worked here for 24 years and we do NOT waitlist for BF." To which I replied, "Yes, you do."

He said he would get the BF concierge (who had not done the rounds of introducing himself, or if he did he skipped me). The BF Concierge and the CSD both came to my seat and I asked the same question, and the BF Concierge said he cleared the waitlist himself at T24 and no one cleared the waitlist after that. I mentioned that I thought it was odd that 6 people in front of me had been upgraded at the gate, and he said that they held sales-issued upgrade vouchers, which I accepted since I had no reason to believe he would lie to me about such a thing. Then I mentioned that I thought it was odd that the cabin was so empty, yet a waitlisted mileage upgrader was stuck down the back - he said they only upgrade 6 seats per flight if available, but that he heard in the future they were thinking of upgrading more people up to the time of departure; I said that that was indeed what I heard as well as a result of the recent Flyertalk DO. Then I asked "So, to clarify, you DO waitlist for BF?" and he said "Yes, we do, but not everyone clears it," and I said "OK, great, because the CSD here said you NEVER waitlist for BF." They both left me, and I could feel the simmering resentment of the 24-year veteran CSD for the rest of the flight.

Ah well. Day-of-travel BF upgrades cannot return soon enough.

ummm...okay. and, the point of that post was that the purser on the flight was wrong?

you're right. the purser was mistaken.

I wonder if that travel manager who got those sales upgrades had booked a bunch of phony reservations. (the sales upgrades do exist, and they are space available day-of). Given that the cabin was sold out the day before and the situation you described, I'd give it a non trivial probability.

If that's the case I'd certainly think CO Insider can find out and deal with them in an appropriate manner.

The fundamental flaw in any sort of cutoff (whether it be 24 hours, 72 hours, even 6 hours) is that it doesn't take into account day of departure operational issues.

Was there perhaps an AUS-IAH flight with 10 BF pax flying AUS-IAH-LGW that got severely delayed leaving AUS and missed IAH-LGW?

What about someone flying DEN-IAH-LGW in BF who got bumped in DEN and rerouted DEN-EWR-LGW?

What about the person flying MEX-IAH-LGW in BF who got stuck in a long immigration line in IAH and misconnected?

What about someone who changes his ticket on the day of departure to fly the next day? Or cancels it altogether?

All these scenarios, which are reasonably common, can impact availability on the day of departure. But the waitlist system (in its present form) does not allow Elites/upgraders to upgrade when space opens up at the last minute.

I can't speak about the 6 gate upgrades, I'm sure CO Insider can look up what happened there. But fundamentally, the problem is that someone wants the seat, is willing to pay for it (albeit in miles in this case), inventory management did the best it could (up to the 24 hour mark), and let's face it, either they don't get it 100% right every time and/or things happen on departure day.

He was very rude - I guess you had to be there to see his nasty little facial movements. I felt like I was watching someone on Jerry Springer, the finger was wagging, the head was tilting back and forth etc. He didn't know I was standing there, but there were other customers around when he did it.

Also, my husband (he's not a plat yet but is a gold) was left down the back while BF went out 1/2 empty, even though he was quite willing to give them $450 and 20K miles to sit up front. His company, who paid for his ticket, won't splash out for BF for flights under 13 hours, so doing the whole $450+20k dance is his only option. He was extremely disappointed that CO didn't give him the upgrade when he was willing to pony up the dough and the miles and there were plenty of seats available, as was I. His comment was "I guess Continental really appreciates me."

The entire experience was just pretty disappointing. With that many seats empty, he should have cleared IMO. That's my point.

Good points, channa, and all very possible in some situations - but in this particular case there were LOADS of empty seats up for grabs at T25, so there wasn't a huge lack of availability - the empty seats just disappeared at T24.

However, Standard 50K awards were available for that flight up until 3 hours before departure.

Yes, that's a good point. But it has been raised hundreds of times on this forum, and I'm not exaggerating. And CO has acknowledged it. At DO III, the CEO and President of CO announced to us they'll fix it. There's little more we can do about this but to wait.

This situation always frustrates me to no end. Good customers who are willing to pay for upgrades with $$$ and miles should not be left sitting in back when there are open seats up front. I do appreciate the problmes with phantom bookings, but there has to be a better way of dealing with the issue without affecting the integrity of the BusinessFirst cabin.

HORRIBLE CUSTOMER RELATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL

Situations like this - willing loyal customer wanting to spend MONEY and miles gets the brush off

I HATE this and have been in this same situation

Sounds like the CSD was quite appropriate. He didn't know the OP was right there. He expressed his annoyance in front of the employees, but kept a professional front before the passenger (or so at least he thought).

That's just silly. You should always act as if the customer is "right there" when there is a chance of a customer being "right there."

Very true. Point well taken.

LOL, I remember when I worked for Business Express (DL express) in ACK back in the 80's, a guy came up to the counter with these gaudy pants with pink whales. After he left, I said to my co-worker, "Did you see those pants?"
Stupid, young, ignorant me. The other woman standing at the counter said, "You mean that guy over there, MY HUSBAND?"

I was ashamed. Not because I said something behind the guy's back, but rather because I made a comment at all.

Thanks, rcherskov, for reminding me to bring goodness, not darkness, into the world!

Especially if any customer is right there as it sounds like there were plenty around.

Shhh! I've been criticizing this this sort of garbage for a while now, and have developed a reputation as a CO-hater. Do you want that to happen to you?

As I have said many times before, I don't understand what CO's problem is. Carriers like BA sell upgrades at the gate. SK only processes upgrades at the gate. Yet CO somehow encounters a huge problem with phantom bookings that must be dealt with in the most customer-unfriendly way possible? I think it is a load of...

I'm not sure that BA can sell upgrades at the gate, but they CAN on board the aircraft provided they have the catering - apparently you ask the CSD and they swipe your credit card along with the Duty Free sales.

I think the issue for all carriers in the case the OP described is the mileage element of the upgrade. BA can't do that on board, and IIRC they possibly won't deduct miles within 24 hours of departure. AA on the other hand can, or at least they would in the past, deduct miles while you were talking to their AAdvantage dept. on your cell phone while standing at the gate though I don't believe the GA has the ability to do this themselves. I've also done upgrades through the front desk folks in AA's Admirals Clubs. AA does, however, charge you $75 as a "late issue fee".