I'm wondering about people's experiences with these Copa paid upgrades.

I'm not sure if they're new but I thought it was a brilliant concept. After purchasing my ticket through an OTA I went on the Copa site to try and select my seats. I did so and after that I noticed there was an option to "bid for an upgrade" there's a minimum (I think MIA-PTY was $80USD and PTY-MDE was like $45USD) and you can slide up to a few hundred dollars.

Now I've flown enough on Copa and seen enough empty seats up front that I thought I'd try it. I know they're hard product isn't amazing, but just wanted to try it plus have some food/drink and get off in Colombia first after 24 hours in transit. They say you'll be told one way or the other if you've been upgraded (each leg is separated) between 13-24 hours prior, I've received nothing yet, but I'm only at about 20 hours prior now.

Anyone have any success with these? I tried calling yesterday but she barely knew what I was talking about even when I explained in Spanish, so I figured I'd just wait. I bid the minimum but my thought was "there's usually open seats, the flights aren't usually very full, and they've set a minimum as a price they're willing to accept, so if there's any open J seats I'll get one as long as someone hasn't outbid me".

It seems easy to me and when I looked today there was still like 5 J seats wide open and I hadn't heard anything.

Kudos for the program, another way to generate revenue while losing very little (maybe a better sandwich than the usual one) and some drinks?

Got the PTY-MDE upgrade, ended up costing me $42 USD, the service wasn't amazing, no TVs, short flight. Some food was offered but it was kinda strange (I've already forgotten what it was) and to no fault of their own there was turbulence for most of the flight so 1 drink and the food was served in a rush late on.

That said...honestly for the $42 to beat the whole customs line on arrival in MDE which put me ahead of our whole flight and I believe the Jetblue flight was well worth it. I will definitely try this again on my next trip. Highly recommended for anyone who would like to try the CM J service or who would like to sit in J and maybe not pay full fare.

Thanks for the tip!

Has anyone else had any experience with bidding on upgrades with Copa? I've lost my MP status this year (having shifted mostly to LAN and AA this past year), so am thinking of giving it a try.

I've got MEX-PTY and PTY-SCL coming up in two weeks. Any suggestions as to what an appropriate bid might be?