Mary2e

Because I'm trying for either a reward ticket OR the upgrade ticket. I have not tried the waitlist much, because until last year, I was always able to get it at some point. My only experience with the waitlist, it did not clear.

I go about twice a year and also send my parents. Take it from me, it's harder and harder to get the seats. So much so, for my last trip, I just gave up and bought the tickets and tried to upgrade. I was able to rev-up one way, but with this change, I suspect there aren't going to be too many rev-ups available any longer.

dlen111

glad that the waitlist policy is changing. I cant tell you how many times, ive been on a BF reward or an upgrade reward where I (or someone in my party) was removed from the list 24 hours and not been put on standby.

Soemtimes you can explain the whole, "P1" policy to the agents but most stand true to the CO policy of no mileage stand by's at the airport.

happened today. I upgraded my friends bos-cun as an engagement gift. bos-ewr showed zero F, but six revenue for the last two+ weeks. My friends were removed from the upgrade list at 624am this morning, and 6 people were seemingly upgraded at 630am after they checked in. F is now sold out.

this was a first though.... CO actually emailed telling them they had been removed from the list. that's never happened to me.

Its really not a big deal as the flight is a short one, but i do hope the new policy takes care of this. the flight in question could have easily been bos-iah instead of bos-ewr. at least they still get nice ride ewr-cun.

a1bengal

Glad to see the improvements that Scott has mentioned .Hope for a seamless transition too Cheers Jane

UA Insider

Thanks SuperG1955 (and also sandbox) for sending over your specific examples. We’ve found why this is happening, and we’re working on getting this corrected now.

Hi rlbmorton, anything other than what we'll be implementing on June 17th leaves too much room for error. It's more common than you think that our customers' credit cards get declined or no longer exist when the upgrades actually clear (partly because a high volume of upgrade rewards are booked several weeks, even months in advance). The amount of effort we spend following up in these cases is very burdensome to manage, and definitely not something we’re willing to push to the departure gate. We also know reversing the upgrade or taking the customer off the waitlist isn't the right answer either, as this would frequently set us up for "super-charged" situations at the airport. By accepting payment up front for all upgrades, the process is much cleaner, consistent and our collective margin of error is dramatically reduced.

Yes manneca, that’s correct. The waitlist priority and subsequent airport standby priority is based on the Elite status of the account from which the miles were withdrawn.

Hi CAL PHL FLYER, I know you're only joking, but this is something what we'll be monitoring very closely. If there's abuse, we'll be forced to reconsider this policy.

Hi dmunz, I can only speculate as to what happened with your seat assignment and upgrade priority in this particular case, but I don't believe this was related to our waitlist or upgrade standby policy (you're welcome to PM me with your confirmation number if you believe otherwise). When this new policy goes into effect, upgrade waitlists will continue to be expired 24 hours before your itinerary departs so that you'll have no issues checking in online. Once checked in, you'll automatically be added to the airport upgrade standby list in accordance with your waitlist priority. In these cases, you'll maintain your original seat assignment unless you're cleared into the front cabin.

Hi Sarah Hanel, fare class will indeed be a secondary tie-breaker. I see that I failed to mention this in my original post, which I've corrected and also recapped below:

ijgordon

Wait a sec -- is this just for the airport standby upgrade list, or for the advance waitlist too? Is the current advance waitlist prioritized by fare class (after status level)?

UA Insider

Hi ijgordon, waitlists are prioritized in status order, followed by the timestamp of the waitlist request. After the waitlist expires, and you're transitioned to the airport upgrade standby list, the priority among formerly waitlisted customers will be status, followed by fare class, followed by timestamp of the waitlist request.

ijgordon

Ahhh...very interesting. Thanks for clearing that up. I'm sure the question will come up at least 17 times before the end of the year.

AA Flyer 2007

Long time AA flier considering the switch to Continental. I noticed you have numerous awards for your Business/First service and this generous new upgrade policy is the icing on the cake. On AA, the long flights typically have 2-4 crew members (pilots I assume) in first class seats for their breaks. Does Continental do this as well? Would my priority as an Elite member allow me access to one of these seats or are these not available at all (crew only)?@:-)

ijgordon

Generally, yes. Depends on the length of the flight. Certain aircraft have crew bunks so they don't actually sit in BusinessFirst seats.
Huh? Are you asking if you can sit in the pilot's lap?

PS, welcome to FlyerTalk.

vsevolod4

This is great news indeed, and one more (relatively simple) change that has big customer benefits at little cost to CO ... and eliminates one of the big differentiators vs. UA and AA, whose upgrades clear any time up to and including the moment that check-in is closed for a flight.

This, combined with the MM program ... two big advances in one month.

So I'll hold out for the introduction of SWUs for at least another month :-)

Thanks, CO and CO Insider

donnyb

Mrs donnyb & I were mileage award waitlisted on 9/9/08 CO 234 segment since April. Lots of empty seats up front, but never cleared the waitlist. Got an email at the 24 hour mark telling us the waitlist had expired. Tried OLCI at 24 hrs and it would not complete. At this point there were 9 empty FC seats per the PDA site, 1 pax UG'd. Called Elite desk and was told to " give it a few more hours to see if the mileage award waitlist would work". Tried a few hours later, no dice. Went to bed, and early next morning tried again, no dice. PM'ed CO Insider for advice but got no response. Called Elite desk again and they could not check us in, nor clear the hold, which they said was due to the mileage award waitlist not dropping off at the 24 hour mark. Transferred to online help, who could not fix it either. Told us the only way to fix it was to drive to the airport (5 hours away) in person and talk to agent. Called Elite desk to ask about getting a message to the local ANC gate agents, no phone # available for the public. "They go on duty at 2:15pm." We drive there, arrive at 2:15 and explain it all over again to them. They are unable to get us checked in as well, takes them about 10 minutes of fiddling around before they finally are able to print BPs and bag tags. At this point we are 2.5 hours before flight time. Agent tells us she will give the UG issue to (name withheld) and we should come back to the airport at flight time & speak to her at the gate to get our UG. We arrive at the gate 1.5 hrs before flight time and speak to (name withheld) who tells us she "called the Elite desk & asked if waitlisted mileage UG award pax get special priority over EUA's and they said no." She the looked away from me & said there was nothing more she could do. The PDA site showed 7 pax upgraded, and we were never listed. In truth it was more than that, because the (replacement) aircraft we flew had 20 F seats not 16. At the 24 hour mark there were only 6 FC seats occupied per the PDA site, but we never even had a chance at a battlefield UG.

My understanding of Scott's announcement post of May 15 was that we were supposed to have a priority over EUA's, but the Elite desk repeatedly said "not".

My advice to others: Series 0 awards are good only if you find a flight segment combo with immediate availablity on all segments. If not try another combo of segments. Waitlisting can be a frustrating nightmare. And possibly a waste of miles. I will try to get some of our miles refunded.

ijgordon

Must have been some other type of glitch. Maybe CO can do a post-mortem on it. I know my Silver parents have cleared flights ahead of higher elites, though I can't recall exactly whether it was before or after the 24 hour mark.

dmbfan222

I had the same experience from people at the Elite Desk and at the Airport as well.

donnyb

Were they condescending toward you as well? Couple of them reminded me of the term "dragon lady" I have read on these threads.

I even had a printed copy of the announcement thread from Scott which I gave the GA to read at her convenience. At that point we were already SOL on the UG.

UA Insider

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