flyster

Thanks Oliver. Couldnt ask for a more trustworthy opinion than moderator of the M&M forum!

Even if I'm on equal footing with the other M&M members, there's lots of competition for just a few seats... I think I'll assume that it's best to buy a ticket based purely on the price/performance of the business class rather than hoping to upgrade to F.

AceAirspeed

All were C to F upgrades:
FRA-AUH A330 cleared at gate. Was 1 of 3 in F cabin.
AUH-FRA A340-300 cleared at checkin. Some confusion with contracted staff at AUH counter and even with LH rep at station, but quickly issued F boarding pass after he read the certificate. Only person in F cabin.
FRA-SFO A380 Cleared in First Class Lounge 1 hour prior to boarding.

My first time using SWUs for LH upgrades. I have to say this is a good use especially since you get access to the FCL, driver to plane, etc.

flyster

Congratulations!

flyin´ruddl

May I ask how you got into the F lounge with a C BP?

F.R.

bennijiggs

star gold?

NewbieRunner

The FCL is for F pax and HON Circle members (and their guest) only.

However, if AceAirspeed connected from AUH-FRA in F to FRA-SFO he had access to the FCL as an arriving F passsenger.

mre5765

IME, if you have a C BP and a SWU, if there is space, the FCL will upgrade you on the spot.

I haven't tried this since LH cut the number of F seats on 747s in half. My hope is that SWUs will work on CO soon, and I will never go to FRA again, ever.

AceAirspeed

Correct!

SFOTurtle

This is a great use of a SWU.

AceAirspeed

Yeah I would have used 2 or 3 SWUs for this. Great flight on a great airplane. Very quiet and comfortable ride, bed with the feather bed and duvet was awesome, and great service by the LH FAs. I would have been more than happy to stay onboard and go back to FRA.
Was a letdown to board my next flight on a rickety UA 757.

bennijiggs

Writing this from the new Senators Lounge next to B43. Man it is nice in here. Anyways, my flight departs in 7 hours from FRA to DEN. I gave the Lounge Lady my SWU and after looking at her computer, she tells me, I am sorry sir, we have only 1 seat left in business class. I say, great, I will take it. She said she had to wait for a supervisor to get there. I thought these SWU were first come first serve? Anyways, she came and found me in the lounge about 30 min later with new boarding pass with a seat in Business. Yes! 6 for 6 this year on my SWU.

oliver2002

Yes they are, but the FM has to approve first if the cabin is nearly full.

WayMaker

I'm not sure that you got an answer to your question. Yes, there are numbers of some sort on the paper certs. And yes, they could probably be tracked and traced. But no, in my experience LH agents do not scan them or enter numbers from the certs into their records. There is a place on them for LH agents to write what flight it was used on. That bit of manual labor tells me that the process is audited by the presence or absence of the paper instrument, not whether the number printed on it is still on a database of valid numbers.

LH agents and operations in general are a bit more scripted, rigid and by the books than their UA counterparts. This means that they are usually inflexible. But it swings both ways. On rare occasions I've seen LH agents get overwhelmed or flustered in disbelief when their supposedly perfect system doesn't work. On one of these occasions there was a veritable scrum of boarding passengers in JNB. An LH agent declined to accept my SWU "voucher" (what LH agents call any certificate) after another agent had already issued me an upgraded boarding pass. I tried to offer it twice. No. So I kept it and redeposited it, using it on another flight later. I figured that I had done what I could. In your situation, I think you could use that very certificate without redepositing it. They are bearer instruments, which has some agents (contract, and not LH agents?) fussing about their transferability, but until we see bar codes or other scannable devices on them, in my opinion, an uncollected (printed for LH) SWU is good until it expires.

lax2010

It looks like people are having a very good chance in using these paper SWU cert yet I have tried once. Can some one please tell or provide a link for the booking class requirement for using these pape SWU? Thanks.

radioglow

On my outbound FRA-BOM on LH756, the LH check-in agent at the *gold desk gave me an upgrade to C on LH stock L ticket. When I bought the ticket, I had explicitly bought an L fare to be able to use the SWU, according to the UAL web site http://www.united.com/page/article/1,,50027,00.html
and hadn't read the fine print. I thought everything was fine, except on the return yesterday LH757, the check-in agent pointed out that it excludes L class, and wouldn't upgrade me. So perhaps not all agents got updated instructions?