Expert Advice Needed on Upgrade
 

Hi everyone,

I was hoping you could give me some advice about something. I am planning a trip from BOS-GIG next month. I am a gold on Continental and I would like a BF upgrade. I have been making this trip to GIG 4 times per year for the last several years, usually on CO. In the past, I have requested mileage upgrades willing to pay the service charge, but BF has always been full. The itinerary I usually book is BOS-EWR-GRU-GIG-GRU-EWR-BOS. I prefer not to make the Houston connection. This time I also have the option of booking on AA BOS-MIA-GIG-MIA-BOS. Both AA and CO have the same price and if I went on AA, I would not have to make the dreadful GRU stop. If I were to book on AA, I would have to buy an additional 6,000 miles to have enough for the upgrade, costing me an additional $400 in addition to the upgrade fee. I checked the seatmap on CO.com for the day I would like to travel and it looks like BF is about half full. Based on your experience, do I have a better chance of getting the upgrade on CO or AA? I am loyal to CO and I would prefer to travel with them, even if it means making the GRU stopover, plus I would not have to buy any additional miles. I have heard that the probability of an upgrade on AA is better though. Any advice on which carrier I should travel? Has anyone gotten an upgrade on EWR-GRU recently?

There is no way to predict if the seats will sell out or not ahead of time. What you can do, is check if CO has any standard BF reward availability for that day on the flight you want by starting to make a dummy BF reward booking. If available, you should be able to clear on the spot when you call, following buying the ticket. If I'm not mistaken (if I am, someone will promptly correct me) BF upgrades and standard BF rewards draw from the same bucket. If no UG reward is available, you'll be placed on the waitlist, and then the upgrade standby list at T-23:59 mark.

As for which has better chances of not selling out - that's pretty hard to tell. Bottom line is, that if a seat is still available at the time they close the airplane doors - you'll get it. A word of warning, though - if going CO through GRU and no reward is immediately available, ask the agent to only put you on the waitlist for EWR-GRU leg. If you ask to waitlist for both, EWR-GRU and GRU-GIG, and you clear into GRU-GIG, you will not get any sort of refund of the fee and miles, even if EWR-GRU doesn't clear. 1hr in Y on the GRU-GIG leg shouldn't be too horrible.

You called? Here to correct you. They draw from different buckets. But kind of moot, OP already stated there was no upgrade availability on his date as he had checked with CO.

One thing worth pointing out is that your elite status on CO will give you priority on the upgrade waitlist. If you don't have status on AA then you'll be at the bottom of the list.

He did? Where? He said he's tried this in the past and BF was always full. He didn't say that he checked with CO this time ;)

To gatinho: For what it's worth, on my return from GIG a little over a week from now (via IAH), BF was probably about half full if not more so, and my waitlist cleared more than a week and a half out. For the EWR-GRU leg this weekend, there were 5 seats left open, and it cleared about 1.5 days out.

I am not sure of the loads for BF for these flights durring different seasons, but I have heard that GIG makes good money often selling all the seats. If you can get a confirmed upgrade with CO that is of course the best. There is really no full proof way to know if the flights you want will have space.

I have no clue about AA's loads or upgrade %.

good luck

[QUOTE=For what it's worth, on my return from GIG a little over a week from now (via IAH), BF was probably about half full if not more so, and my waitlist cleared more than a week and a half out. For the EWR-GRU leg this weekend, there were 5 seats left open, and it cleared about 1.5 days out.[/QUOTE]

Were you UG's due to EUA of your Plat status? This would be a different situation than a award UG. If the OP is Plat I could see going for it. You have a much better chance at the 24 hour mark.

But if not, notabob's suggestion for waitlisting the long segment is good advice. From personal experience as a Silver Elite, I would only award UG if immediately available on all segments, or waitlist on one very long segment. That way if you do not get the UG your miles can be redeposited. The worst thing to do is waitlist 2 or more segments. If you don't clear all of them you will have to cancel all your UG's & redeposit miles or decide to take what you can get, greatly devaluing your miles.

There are no free/EUA upgrades to GRU/GIG.

And you get your miles back if the BF segment doesn't clear, even if the domestic one does.

As sbm12 said, there are no EUA on BF flights, so mine are regular BF upgrade rewards. And you have to be careful with the 24hr mark. Once that passes, you can no longer request an upgrade nor waitlist for the flight. And you can also lose out on the opportunity to upgrade as all/most of the available seats may already be given out as T-24hr mark approaches. You can always waitlist, and get your money and miles back if the leg doesn't clear.

:o Oops, my bad. For some odd reason I have a hard time closely following long posts with no paragraph breaks. It also seems silly for the OP to not have at least checked with CO before posting here.

You can check every day if you want on pda.continental.com/info.
Yesterday, Thursday night, 13 people were upgraded. Tonight, four people have been upgraded so far, two are still on the standby list and there are six unsold seats. Tomorrow night one person has been upgraded and there are four unsold seats. Sunday night two people have been upgraded and there are seven unsold seats.
Is that helpful?

Sorry, forgot about the diff between BF and regular F UG's.

Question: do the BF UG's come from a certain bucket, as the reg F domestics? Or is it more like if the seat is empty & unsold it will go to you? What triggers a waitlist vs immediate availablility?

They come out of the F bucket, which is not publicly visible. If, at departure time, the seat is unsold they will upgrade anyone left on the waitlist at the gate. This is a change in policy that was recently enacted.

As for what triggers seats going into the F bucket, that is something that revenue management dictates.

Understood. So if there are no EUA's on BF, you have an very good chance of clearing the award waitlist if the website shows a sizeable # of empty seats up front, correct?

The reason I ask is to differentiate between a BF award UG and a dom F award UG, where the latter has EUA's in line at the 24 hour mark. Do I have this right?

CO will (try to) not send out a BF seat empty if there is someone on the waitlist. But you might not clear until the very last minute. Seeing a number of seats available today for a flight next month isn't necessarily telling, as many BF seats are purchased very close to departure.


Folks redeeming rewards are prioritized above EUAs, or at least they're supposed to be, even inside the 24 hour window. There have been some issues within the 24 hour window reported, but otherwise reward redemptions do seem to be clearing ahead of freebies.

Thanks for the clarification. FWIW, I was one of those "issues" recently on a dom F waitlist where I lost out due to the system not working as described.
At least I was reading it the same as you. Waiting on a response from CO.