Yes, fare rules.

What?! I have never heard of such stupidity.

Pathetic. About as sad as a company who will not pay for GoGo WiFi on a TCON. I have a friend who works for a company like this. He has to fly FLL-ATL-SFO and his company will not let him expense GoGo WiFi. Not to mention the fact that they will not allow him to book the less expensive F ticket that is as restricted as the more expensive Y ticket.

So, he watches movies, reads personal books, and sleeps on his travels to and from SFO. That is, he does ZERO work. So, we are looking at 14 - 16 hours of lost productivity for a highly-paid employee because the company is penny-wise, pound foolish.

Not unheard of. I've also heard of requirements that you get the BPs from the agent/kiosk as opposed to the OLCI ones you print yourself. Proves you actually flew, instead of just booking the reservation and cancelling it. (Well, it doesn't really prove you flew, but it proves you at least went to the airport.)

+1

My company has a policy of "coach or cheapest available", which leaves the door open to F if it is cheaper than Y. But I understand some companies don't want their employees even sitting in F, because of image, because it might be difficult to explain to customers even if it is cheaper, etc. For instance I believe Target is one of those companies. Only Bullseye the dog gets to fly First Class.

Difficult? How about, we saved you X dollars on travel costs and, in addition, were able to work an extra Y hours on your project.

Don't even get me started on car service vs taxi vs drive and park. The fare for a taxi from my home to the airport, with tip, is $54. The fare for a car service, with tip and tax, is $67. If I drive myself, it takes about 25 - 30 minutes to get there, and then an additional 30 minutes to find parking and to catch the shuttle to the terminal. Then you add in the time on the back-end when I get home, plus the parking fee.

Yeah, the car service is a no-brainer.

Target. Oh my. This is the same company that did not spend the money on securing their wireless infrastructure and then paid $256 million dollars to fix their systems and to handle lawsuits and investigations after they were breached :rolleyes:

You're preaching to the converted. I don't disagree with you. But some companies fear the occasions where appearances matter more than facts.

Not sure I see the benefit of a car service over a taxi. I'm in a similar situation where my fixed-rate taxi ride is $42 and a Town Car is $52. I pay the $10 out of pocket because the drivers are friendlier and the cars are more comfortable and overall I think the experience is worth the extra $, but I don't see any benefit to my company (and I doubt they would either) so the buy-up doesn't get expensed.

FCM part 2? I am seeing some really low G fares the are UPs off of deeply discounted Y fares. examples: Less than $600 r/t ATL-DEN or $550 ATL-LGA. Much different than the last minute A or P UPs that require a substantial base fare then a low buy up. ($500 + $49 ea/way) Soon everyone will be tempted to buy F at some point in the sales process.

They enticed me this week and I bought. ~$1400 for coach and ~$1600 for biz class (looks like Q-UP, maybe?), US to Peru. My company reimburses coach only but I had a voucher that covered part of the difference, and decided to pay the rest out of pocket. Especially since no comp upgrades on 2 of the 4 legs and opups are rare.

Except a corporate TA can't always be bothered to attempt to sell various classes given an availability screen.
Example
F7 A7 P7 G5
Y9 B9 M9 H8 Q5 K1 L0 U0...(all other classes 0)
A TA might sell K not realizing that Q is $59 more and can book as G.

I've booked a couple of BWI-DEN via ATL lately and have noticed some very tempting price points for A or P ($600 for Q and $800 for A or P) because DEN can be a hard upgrade even for Plat I almost did it. I couldn't figure out how F was half full post ski season. Now I have a good idea why.

So.... I'm booking a multi-city trip and 1st Class is showing as $500+ dollars more than the coach ticket. I'm about to hit the button to purchase the coach ticket when I notice the usual "Upgrade to First Class for just xxx.xx more per person per segment" message. Usually I just ignore them because they want $300-$600 for that so I choose to take my chances with the medallion upgrade. This time, the message offers the upgrade for $13.63!!! So for a grand total of a little more than $27, I'm upgraded on 3 of 4 flights (the other is a CRJ).

Geez! No wonder upgrades are tougher and tougher when people can get out of coach for about $25 at booking!!!

DL has done the math... take the $15 and assume the DM/PM you just snubbed is a gamer. These guys are wicked smart, they just fired a bad customer - other airlines don't have the onions, and that business guru told me this is the mark of a "mature" enterprise. Buy buy buy!

Moving along to our next MBA inspired lesson: using metrics like "paid first class utilization" to convince investors strategy=results... well looky there, at $15 a pop we can almost get 100% paid first class! Done. What's next? Where's TH, he's an ideas man.

Depends if you want the extra MQM's. I was 100% on UGs JFK-Caribbean as an FO, and have continued as a GM, so I think you'll be flying in front either way. FCM at its finest.

I do DTW/MSY every labor day weekend. In the past always upgraded at the window even when I was Gold, and there were always gate upgrades on that route. This past weekend when I did the trip, my upgrade did clear but only two seats were available upfront. On the return as a diamond on a K fare I was number three on the list with NO seats available upfront.

I too flew from MSY-DTW this past Monday and must have been right behind you (#4) as a Platinum. Not a single seat available in first.

I made Silver for the first time 3 years ago and have noticed that my upgrade chances have improved little if flying on a Friday or Sunday.

Platinum has been beneficial on hub routes such as PIT-ATL, but I used to usually get upgraded as a Silver on PIT-DTW, PIT-JFK/LGA.

I just feel that with FCM, your only hope of getting upgraded is if you are on a 757.