Upgrade process now rewards Elite members by fare class.

[dbaker]

Upgrade process now rewards Elite members by fare class. (http://www.continental.com/onepass/news/continental/co_20030114_01.asp)


NEW - Restricted fare class: Beginning February 1, 2003, upgrade priority within Elite level will be based on fare class purchased. The fare class structure in priority order is as follows: H, K, B, V, Q and T.


It was only a matter of time. At least all fares are eligible.

One interesting aspect of this is that most of the high fares are purchased just a few days before the flight, when your 5-day (plat) T-fare upgrade could have already cleared. As a result, A9F0 all of a sudden can be a problem if you're on a cheap fare.

[NWgoldelite]

Do you know if Northwest will be doing the same?

[Nugget]

At 06:13 this morning I got an EUA email for my IAH->IND segment on Friday, so clearly Continental has not completely discontinued the practice of clearing seats in time to make the 5/3/1-day elite EUA windows. I suspect I won't hear anything about the AUS->IAH leg until the day of my travel, though. Based on recent flights, I probably won't know for sure if I'm EUAd until I arrive at the airport to board the flight.

It seems to me that Continental has taken their published and predictable EUA policies and layed them down on top of a manually-controlled and unpredictable system where revenue control chooses on a flight-by-flight basis when to release seats. This significantly reduces the appeal of EUA for me.

With the most recent changes, now Continental has two motivators for not clearing seats -- where before they just needed to keep enough seats open to meet the predicted demand for full-fare F purchases (which is low on IAH->IND, I'm sure) now they are also motivated to withhold EUAs to capture higher-fare, last-minute coach ticket purchases in order to actually honor the new EUA policies.

[merchanb]

NEW - Restricted fare class: Beginning February 1, 2003, upgrade priority within Elite level will be based on fare class purchased. The fare class structure in priority order is as follows: H, K, B, V, Q and T.


Interesting, I would have thought Y would be first.

1. Are they still going to charge $300 for B & V, $400 for Q & T when you want to buy upgrades with miles?

2. Is there a listing of Northwest fare codes somewhere? I emailed them and they came back with a bunch of unhelpful words followed by the URL of a site which didn't say anything useful.

[dbaker]

NEW - Restricted fare class: Beginning February 1, 2003, upgrade priority within Elite level will be based on fare class purchased. The fare class structure in priority order is as follows: H, K, B, V, Q and T.


Interesting, I would have thought Y would be first.


Y fare upgrades are automatic at time of booking and EUA doesn't apply.


1. Are they still going to charge $300 for B & V, $400 for Q & T when you want to buy upgrades with miles?


That's only for upgrades to BusinessFirst -- and yes, they are.