Not anyone, only someone with the requisite number of miles, which have been earned...

Which has nothing to do with elite status.

Please try again.

Of course not. But that hardly makes someone who deposits 50,000 for a BF upgrade to Asia an "anyone"

The whole point of this discussion, after all, is that this upgrade is available to non-elites, at least on paper. In reality, it is so rare as to be virtually non-existent.

Someone who can come up with 50k miles is hardly "anybody." They may not have elite status, but they have still earned the miles, no?

And what is elite status, after all? An arbitrary line in the sand. Someone who has flown 24,999 miles on CO has still earned those miles, has shown loyalty to the airline, has provided them with valuable revenue, etc.

"Anybody" who better fit the criteria for someone entering a sweepstakes. The sad thing is that the chances of winning a sweepstakes may be greater than for a non-elite nabbing a BF upgrade award.

Well of course they have to earn the miles to get the reward. To assume otherwise is just plain stupid. There are plenty of non-elites that either have the miles or have access to points to convert to miles. The question was whether a non-elite can redeem for a BF upgrade reward. The answer is unequivocally yes. You can keep coming up with inane discussion points as to whether someone will actually do so, but the question of whether they can is not debatable. The answer is yes.

Are they rarely redeemed by non-elites? I have no idea because I haven't seen the CO internal records. And I'm pretty sure you haven't either. So I doubt you know any better than I do. Do you have any proof that these rewards are rarely redeemed by non-elites?

Yes, elite status is arbitrary, but I have no idea why you are bringing that up in this discussion.

Anyone who has sufficient miles from ANY source is eligible for BF upgrades. They can request to waitlist if the award is not immediately available and if seats open up they will get the reward.

All of the other "discussion" you're spouting off about is irrelevant to the question of who is eligible to redeem for the rewards that are under discussion.

Yes, the award is available to non-elites.

Second, whether or not they are actually available, I can only judge from my experience as a CO OP elite, trying dozens of times to get a BF upgrade and never succeeding once.

I have, however, never attempted to redeem a BF award as a non-elite. First, I do not fly CO TATL any more (I prefer l'Avion & OpenSkies). Second, I didn't even know that this award was available to a non-elite till today (and thanks to you).

My point is that a frank and open discussion of this kind of award on CO needs to include the extreme rarity of its availability.

That's all.

Not sure I agree.

If you assume an upgrade seeker to not fly (or at least not credit his/her OP account with flights) a BF upgrade mileage requirement could still be easily achieved via the partners -- namely the 21,000 / 30,000 initial Chase bonus miles.

A non elite, with no OnePass mileage whatsoever, could score the 20k+ initial Chase sign up bonus (assuming they're approved for the card) and then turn around and list for an upgrade to Europe (20,000 miles each way).

If we assume minimal spend of $417/month on the card (or $5k) for a year Southern South America and Asia (25k o/w) become in range as does TLV at $873/month. And again this assumes no other travel is credit to the OP account and no other easy-to-reach partner promotions are applied.

I really think the key is schedule flexibility -- I don't see the mileage requirement being a hurtle for a customer...especially when the partner offers can front you the mileage needed for the u/g.

Simply put:

Fine. But still not "anyone."

I'll give you an example of "anyone."

Yesterday I signed up to win a free ticket on Air Tahiti Nui as part of their tenth anniversary sweepstakes. I have never flown on TN, am not a member of their frequent flyer program, Club Tiare, nor do I have an American Express Air Tahiti Nui card.

Aside from the most basic entry criteria (age, U.S. resident, not being an employee of TN) I am an anyone.

So I entered the sweepstakes. If I win it will on the basis of pure chance and zero commitment.

All those examples you cite in your post may not have accrued business directly to CO, but they accrued miles on OP per the rules of the program. So they have had to provide at least enough commitment to OP to accrue enough miles (as much as 50,000 miles for an Asia BF upgrade).

As I stated earlier, I don't have a problem with the reality, it is what it is. The reality remains that these BF upgrade awards are among the hardest to get at any level of eliteness, and certainly more difficult without status.

Finally, regarding partner offers, that is a whole different discussion. But as far as CO BF upgrades, very, very difficult to score.

I'm not sure what you are getting at here, the analogy went over my head. Can you elaborate?

sbm12 is very much right. You are very wrong on "more difficult without status" - in fact, BF upgrades are the only thing when your status doesn't matter at all, as far as scoring them. It would be nice to see CO make your status count for BF upgrades, even reducing cash co-pays by 100$ or 200$ for elites would be sensible and appreciated.

50k miles is easy to earn as sbm pointed at - these are not butt-in-seat miles, get chase deposit account, get chase credit card = 41k miles.

When was your experience getting BF upgrades? It used to be that there was 72-hour window for upgrades (ie. if your upgrade didn't clear within 72 hours, you are SOL), then it got moved to 24 hours, now (with the cash co-pays), I believe you can get upgraded at any time, if you have the miles.

I'm fairly new as frequent flier, so don't know if there were co-pays when there were 72/24 hour windows.

My experience was very simple: The upgrades didn't come through.

Many others here have related similar experiences.

This was in the period 2002-2005. Since I primarily fly to Paris, I now fly either OpenSkies or l'Avion (now a part of l'Avion).

That's the key part of your argument. Things have changed in the past 3-6 years.

Yeah, this was when it was 72/24 hour window for upgrades, and no co-pay.

Since then CO realized it is better to take our miles and cash than to let plane fly empty in F.

I think the appearance of OS (and similar "cheap" business airlines) is what forced CO to get rid of the upgrade windows - making BE "exclusive" turned out not to be really worth it.

I wonder if those using BF upgrades feel the availability has improved.

Are BF upgrades hard? I'd say yes (and generally agree with you.)

If you argue the main roadblock is accumulating the miles than I disagree for the reasons posted upthread. (And you were the one who initially mentioned the mileage requirement which opens up the door to mileage accrual regardless of the modus operndi ;))

On the other hand if you argue from a schedule based perspective (i.e. not everyone has +/- 8 months of slack in their calendar) than I would agree with your assessment. Moreover as a matter of fact the upgrade figures your quoting are r/t's where only half the amount is required.

In my experience BF upgrades are hard; I don't disagree. The only times I've scored the u/g (3 times, HKG >> EWR when there were only 4 people in J, IAH >> LGW and LGW >> IAH on a full Y fare where J went out with empties on both legs.)

The key to make BF upgrades work for anyone is a flexible schedule. If you don't have that then count on sitting in the back...and I don't know if I'd consider the Y>>J upgrade on the same level as scoring a free pair of tickets to Tahiti.

That said are you going to make it down to IAH for the DO in Feb TWA Fan 1? I always enjoy chatting with you and would relish the opportunity to do it in person. ^

As another wise poster one said: "CO was using a nuke to take out a rat with the 72 hour rule."

I think the reason (and this is just my personal opinion) CO dropped the 72/24 hour rule was that they became confidant enough in their controls to prevent revenue leakage from phantoms displacing last minute J ticket sales.