Clydez

My waitlist usually gets cleared 1 or 2 days before departure. This time i rang the plat line to request upgrade, and 5 mins later the upgrade confirmation came. lol

SuloL

Hope that is the case! I remember also seeing something about 150% before, but could not recall specifics. Not a frequent user of these campaign fares, as I value a certain degree of flexibility.

Freudian? Haha, just hate those freebies.

Trav1970

I would really hope that reducing earnings of I class is not in AY's plans. When Lufthansa introduced reduced earnings for their Z class, that also marked the end of me using Lufthansa (haven't actually purchased a single business class ticket from them ever since).

FFlash

So you left Star flights and haven't seen TK Lounge for a while- then your second statement is understandable
I think the TK lounge is great but you lose the chill pretty fast. It is nowadays gone downhill, crowded etc, but still a great *lounge.

FFlash

This is exactly how it should be. Unless seats are sold out, they should ALWAYS clear upgrades of a Lumo member IMO.

intuition

Agreed, but given the situation at the airport, I'd say it would be difficult unless they make the premium lounge a preimum lounge.

This I actually fear - the softperks of plat are undocuemnted and easily removed. How are they going to make the "lumo line" better than "plat line"? Easiest done by removing soft perks from plat.

NoWindowSeat

intuition

I agree, but I am having trouble seeing how they will make the differentiation work in reality.

Lumo line is very likely the same people as plat line (and likely the same as gold line and ...)
So if Lumo upgrades are to be cleared in 100% of cases, plats are clearing in what, 75% or 50%? How would you instruct staff to do that?
First, it is not CS that clears upgrades it is rev management. If they use the prioritized waitlist and puts lumo on top, there will still be cases when no upgrades clear. Rev mgnt very likely cannot see (and does not care about) membership tiers. CS asks if seat can be released and if seats are released CS works the waitlist. And we all know they do not release seats just because there are unsold seats - you can be denied upgrade while J cabin fly with 8 seats empty.

For any new perk, like free same day changes, I guess it is easier to instruct staff this is only for Lumo - still they need to remember a policy that applies once every 10 000 call or so.

ffay005

Before we knew anything about Lumo, I had the same fear as Intuition. But now when we know there are ~100 Lumos, I don't think they will reduce Plat benefits because of the Lumos. The group is simply too small to be a threat to Plats. I think the biggest difference between Lumo and Plat will be that for Lumos, they will make all the exceptions they possibly can, ranging from award and upgrade space being released on basically any flight to same-day standby if you arrive early at the airport to more convenient reroutes when irrops occur etc. So when a Lumo asks for something, be it a special favour or not, he will be told "yes" when others might get a "no".

ffay005

I'm pretty sure CS notifies Revenue management of the tier when they make requests. Isn't that the whole point of the requests and the better likelihood for upgrades to clear when you're Plat/Gold?

NoWindowSeat

Just do it like the Lumos do...buy J and stop worrying about upgrades! 😁

intuition

The way I understand waitlist prio, is that tier trumps listing date. Ie if a gold is waitlisted since 2 months, I still get prio one as my tier is higher than gold. (Listing date in waitlist is only used to prio between same tier members) So who is number 1 on waitlist can change and that is why I don't think rev. is aware of tier.
Instead, if a plat has not been cleared of waitlist, I think it is CS' role to nag them to release seat.

It is just my guess, but I think the better likelyhood from getting cleared of waitlist depends on CS nagging revenue management, not because revenue management is taking any customer consideration. They only care what the revenue management system says about gettingmost money out of free seats.

jmmi

A recent experience: I bought tickets for two in October/November for a flight in mid-January. Upgrade availability showed one so I upgraded my companion and entered the waitlist. I assume that, as a Platsku, I was no. 1 on the list. Between then and the flight I called CS three times to ask them to call revenue management. On all occasions the CS rep. said "it clears if it clears" and at least one of them said I shouldn't bother trying to get them to call RM, which I took as an enhancement in policy. YMMV, interested to hear others' experiences.

intuition

Did it clear in the end?

IME, CS says things like "oh it din't clear yet? I'll takl to another department and see what we can do". But last time I was on waitlist was maybe 12m ago, so things can certainly have changed.

jmmi

It did, at T-48 or so. IIRC, I had called them about a week before, and then sent an email three days before the flight. They replied to the email at T-36 saying "it had cleared already, have a nice flight" which again sounds to me that CS had nothing to do with the upgrade clearing.