Anyone know the typical bid range for MIA-PTY or the reverse? Thanks.

Anyone know if the bid range changes as the flight date draws nearer and/or as more J seats are sold, or does it remain the same? I have two Copa flights coming up, and one is still showing all 16 J seats available in the seat map. Thanks.

Not that the airline uses much logic in general, but it would make no sense for the bidding range to change, as the winning bidders will be the people who bid the most. The airline should give the option of the lowest amount of money it will potentially accept and then up to some insanely high number. This should always be the same range, whether its 2 days out with 15 seats left, or 100 days out with 1 seat left

The "Buy it Now" option would presumably change depending on actual demand

If you want to fly in business for these flights, then buy J or Instant Upgrade, if available. If you are trying to do it on a budget, then bid the minimum or min +$5. Its my guess (with 0 inside info) that hardly anyone bids on Copa flights

PTY-MIA/MIA-PTY should in theory be more business focused than FLL/MCO/TPA flights - meaning that both more people who outright pay for J and higher elites could be on it

Seatmap is never great, especially for Copa flights, as a ton of people do not select their seats before checking in at the airport. What dates/flights are you on, I will check the loads as best I can

Its not MIA, but on our flight to MCO on the 21st March, I can bid from $100-$295 for J or Instant Upgrade for $210

FLL-PTY on the 25th March = $145-$320 or $255 instant

PTY-MCO in Oct = $100-$295 - no instant option
MCO-PTY in Oct = $115-$275

There are at least 9 J seats left on each of these flights above

What are your ranges for MIA?

I only have experience on PTY/MIA-FLL and PTY-BOG. I always bid the minimum, and once I did the outright purchase. Hard to draw conclusions, but I was charged $48.15 PTY-BOG and $71.40 BOG-PTY (both minimum bids + taxes). I also did the "Buy Now" option from PTY-FLL and was charged $205. Can't remember if the actual "cost" was $205 or if it was $190+taxes. Other times it has been as low as $145 MIA-PTY. The only time I did not "win" bidding the minimum was when there were only 2 seats in business on a Friday afternoon PTY-MIA.

Hope this helps!

They are really pushing the upgrade emails for my MCO flight tomorrow morning. 4 emails* about it so far:

2x on the 13th, 6 hours apart - definitely separate emails, as the 2nd one said " Sigue interesado en un ascenso? "
1x yesterday AM
1x today just after midday

Flight is before 8am tomorrow, so figured that they would have all this finished by now. Economy is oversold, and still 8 more seats in J

*received the first 2 before my comp upgrade last Satuday, so the last 2 sent to the original PNR with my gf still on it

Is it for the month of july?

Bid the minimum of $90 for UIO-PTY (1.5 hrs), was labled "pobre". I saw on expertflyer.com J9. Received upgrade <24 hours later.

I booked the flight late, only got 1 invite email, responded, or "won". Is $90 (+PA taxes = 100.70) 'worth it' for a short flight? Depends. I know I won't have to worry about overhead storage, or the agent hassling me about the size or weight of my carry-on, boarding in group 1, using the "gold line" or whatever, etc.. A good value for this traveler.

bid for upgrade dissected
 

Another bid-for-upgrade success story. I purchased a r/t flight PTY-LIM 1 day in advance.

After ticketing, ran through the "bid for upgrade" for inbound flight, which was T-5d. Bid the lowest possible, $140 for 3.5 hr LIM-PTY, labeled poor.

At T-3d, received an email "are you sure you want to bid so low" and invited me to revise my bid. I declined.

At T-50h, my bank advised me that Copa charged my credit card.

At T-42h, got the email confirmation of the upgrade.

Copa website was showing business class sold out at this point.

At T-6h, flight status showed Capacity 16, Booked 16, Checked in 9, empty upgrade list.

At T-2h, Checked in 14, 1 person on upgrade list.

At T-45m, Checked in 16, 4 people on upgrade list, which is how the flight departed.

Moral of the story: Copa apparently will sell upgrades out from under its Elites. At least one upgradeable elite lost out to a cash bid. One would assume some of those passengers in clase ejecutivo were status holders that received upgrades before the upgrade list started. This is a prejudice on my part, but I wonder just how "serious" are the elites that don't check in until 2 hours before the flight. Then again, if they were last-minute, high dollar customers, they might be angry at missing an upgrade.

Hi all,

Looking for advice on how to bid on my itin. I have:

14 JAN
MEX-PTY ($140 min)

15 JAN
PTY-MDE ($50 min)

20 JAN
MDE-PTY ($45 min)
PTY-SFO ($235 min)

Looks like there are 3 seats left for sale up front on the PTY-SFO leg and obviously that's the one that I really want, as it is ~8h. Should I bid now at say $250? Wait til Jan?

Any informed advice would be much appreciated. I have UA Gold, in case that helps.

Happy to be wrong, but 2 months out and C/J=3 for one of the most popular routes, its highly unlikely that any bid will be successful. CM Pres/Plat/Gold will get upgraded 5/3/2 days out. So all seats will most likely be gone by then (and probably even well before that). Saying that, rows 5/6/7 are currently available, so there might be limited CM status members on the flight atm (or they have just yet to reserve seats)

Bids do not go through until about 20 hours before departure

UA Gold means nothing for seat selection/bidding etc. Only thing it might help you with if OpUps were needed, and all CM status members were taken care of

You stand a much better chance if you were on CM208 in the morning, as there are 11 J seats left there

How’s Flying Blue XP working with these upgrade?

Upgrade accepted, but downgraded from W to Z fare class
 

I'm flying LAX to PTY to MDE roundtrip leaving on Wednesday, which was booked in a W fare class. I'm crediting to United and need this flight to re-qualify for Gold (W fare class on United earns 75% award miles and approximately $450 PQP for just that one flight).

Since it's a red-eye, I bid $335 for an upgrade to flat-bed on LAX to PTY and just found out an hour ago it was accepted. But when I logged into my account, the fare class on LAX to PTY changed from W to Z. Z doesn't earn any award miles (which also means it earns no PQP).

Copa's terms for purchased upgrades say:

But when I called Copa to see if they could move from Z back to W, they said they couldn't. I also called United and they said they have to use whatever Copa reports to them.

I'm wondering if anyone has had this happen before? Did you receive the full flight credit even though you were re-booked to Z? It seems unfair I'd lose miles and PQP because I paid extra for an upgrade, so I just want to see what I can do.

You will (should) get credited with the original fare class, as is standard in these situations

That is also my experience from my many many upgrades on CM - paid and complimentary.