WP upgrade on CO
 

Hi all,

I'm taking a business trip this fall to San Diego. It's a CO flight BDL-EWR-SAN. I purposly purchased a B class fare so I could use my NW mileage to upgrade. After I purchased (online), I called WP to upgrade. They told me only the return flight (SAN-IAH-BDL) had availability - ok, no problem. They told me I can keep checking back to see if the EWR-SAN opens up again. (or for me, I just kept checking seatmap.com).

Anyway, amazingly...a seat opened up today! Thought that wouldn't happen because it's a popular flight and usually full. So---I called WP back, and they tell me...that'll be $50. WHAT??? The first time I call, they are more than happy to change it for me for free...AND tell me to keep checking back in case a seat opens up. They did NOT mention it would incur the $50 change fee.

I guess I don't understand why I wasn't charged the first time...

When "this fall" is your flight?
https://www.nwa.com/freqfly/travel/options.shtml

October 25 - 30th. Plenty of time. So if I read this correctly, I should not have been charged?

I also found this...

http://www.nwa.com/freqfly/travel/unused.shtml

Look under - "WorldPerks Award Itinerary Changes"

Still doesn't make sense as to why I was charged the second time.

You might want to refer back to this post of mine on essentially the same topic "NW Elite upgrading on CO using NW miles ?", 4/16/03):

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum35/HTML/005795.html

As you can see, I found upgrading a CO ticket using NW miles to be very painful, even using the usually very efficient NW Platinum phone line agents.

I'm still baffled by the "service charge", (which was graciously waived) -- I wasn't expecing to pay any charge.

Also, despite the comments in the responses, I was issued paper upgrade certifs on CO (looked similar to a ticket by mail).

Thanks hsmythe

I think I'm going to call them back and try and straighten this out. It makes no sense...

I will get my $50 back! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mad.gif

Ok - here is the answer to the "$50" question. IF there is mileage applied to a ticket (10,000 miles for my return trip) and I now want to upgrade my outbound trip - NW re-deposits the mileage and then takes out 20,000 miles - thus the $50 fee.

Hard to believe a couple silly keystrokes costs you $50 bucks...

Why can't they just withdraw another 10k for a one-way upgrade?

Can they do that? I don't know...not familiar enough with that. It's a R/T e-ticket - they keep telling me they have to reissue the ticket. Not sure if they are trying to pull the wool over my eyes or not.