Direct Flight Upgrades
 

Good evening--question for you all. I am looking at flying NW1577 on 19 FEB that is listed as a direct CLT-IND flight but does stop in DTW. Does anyone know if your chances for an upgrade are generally worse for flights such as this because it requires the same seat to be open on both legs or better because you get on the plane at the flight's originating point? Just curious :)

As a general rule, it is good to avoid "direct" flights. You lose mileage and, as you say, there must be upgrade availability on both legs

Furthermore, I believe upgrade availability is different for "direct" flights that have a stop. Having R availability on both CLT-DTW and DTW-IND isn't enough...there must be specific R availability throughout. Just because there's EUA seats on both flight separately doesn't mean it's available for the combined flight.

-RM

Unfortunately there's slim pickin' left for this trip, which has been a pain to plan. I do try to avoid the direct option but in this case, the 918a departure sure beats a 600am when you hope to have a bit of fun Saturday night. I think I'll save the time, $100 and if I find myself less than 200 miles short of Gold or Plat, make a year end MR.

Even worse, assuming both legs are on the same equipment, I'm pretty sure the SAME seat (i.e., 2A, 4B, etc.) has to be free on both legs, since I don't think the computer can assign you to different seats numbers on the two legs of the "direct" flight. You might find a GA who can override that on the battlefield, but I don't think EUA will.

While that's true, if NW provides "R" bucket availability for CLT-DTW-IND as a through flight, their systems will provide seats for it. It's built into their logic. So even though the FC cabin for DTW-IND may show 4 seats available but NW is willing to sell 6, that usually means 2 seats are reserved for CLT-DTW-IND as a through flight and they are holding two particular seats for through pax. Of course, this is not an indication of "R" seats for the through flights.

e.g. NW212 runs LGA-DTW-SEA, I've taken it rarely but never had a problem upgrading it at the 5/6 day window.

-RM