Purchasing First Class upgrades on CO?
 

Newb here... I usually fly on Airtran which has there wonderful 40-80 dollar FC upgrade. I (because of price) booked a last minute trip to SFO (from DTW) on CO for this weekend. My flight home is a pretty bad red eye 12:30am PST to 11:30am EST I'm just wondering what kind of policy CO has for upgrading to first class at the airport (for the last leg of my trip) I've searched a bit across the forums and can't seem to get a clear answer on *purchasing* an upgrade as apposed to using miles or elite status. it would cost 800 dollars EXTRA to upgrade right now. Wondering if I should expect cheaper at the airport depending upon availability etc.. thanks ahead of time and sorry if I posted this in the wrong forum.

Welcome to FT - you might want to try the CO forum itself, but be warned: search search search. they get very cranky if you don't.

Welcome to FlyerTalk egoods !

As ConciergeMike pointed out, Budget Travel forum isn't the place for this question, so I'm moving it to Continental OnePass forum.

You ought to search the sticky with info, where you will find that there is no such thing as paid FC upgrade on CO at the gate (with the exception of Hawaii flights as I undertand it).

I'll let others chime in, but believe that as a non elite on CO you are left with paying for FC at time of purchase.

EmailKid
Budget Travel Moderator

For this trip your only option is to pay the fare difference.

Definitely not going to get it via cash at the gate. Sorry.

You can try using miles if you are on a higher fare bucket, but it sounds like you probably don't have the miles anyways since you don't fly CO that often.

S.

Trans-cons and mid-cons tend to be the hardest to get elite upgraded on, so even if CO did sell upgrades at the gate like DL and AT, there probably wouldn't be any to sell.

Don't wait until you check in ... by then, it's likely all F seats will be spoken for.

Call Continental. Pay the difference for a full "Y" fare which gets priority upgraded to "F" space available. Or to full "F" which is not much higher than "Y" in many cases.

There are no discount "buy-ups" on CO.

The Y-up only works for elites. For a non-elite the Y fare will upgrade to F AFTER all other elite upgrades are processed. Check the FAQ sticky for more info on that.