Comments on: United restores confirmed upgrades to top-tier frequent fliers. Plus: UA/Continental upgrades

By: Scott ANdrews

Scott ANdrews — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:54:14 +0000

The unlimited upgrade approach sucks. While it might seem that lower level elites don’t get screwed, that is not actually the case. When you had a finite number of upgrades available, people tended to use them for flights that they really wanted to upgrade. SO, on any given flight you might have 10-20 people trying to upgrade. As a 1M mile premier exec, I would get upgraded about 50% of the time. Under the new policy, there are consistently about 40-50 people on the list, and only the 1K’s get upgraded. in the last 10 flights I have taken I have been upgraded once, and that was because the plane was practically empty. Instead of being between 3 and 10 on the list , I am now typically between 15 and 20, and effectively never get upgraded.

After 15 years of flying on UAL, I am going to go find an airline that actually cares about rewarding loyalty.

By: Barton

Barton — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:42:18 +0000

I’ll be interested to see how UA and CO work their frequent flyer programs in the near future. My coworker who lives in Tampa flies CO through Houston Bush a lot and he gets upgraded about 90% of the time, no coupons or e-upgrades needed. I’m Premier Exec with UA out of Denver but only get my e-upgrades and a very occasional upgrade due to oversold economy cabin (rarely, if ever, out of DEN).I’ve heard a lot of back and forths about each airline’s program but it seems like CO has the more “lenient” program? I’m not sure of this but for flying 60,000+ miles a year with UA I don’t feel very special (upgrade-wise). Any thoughts?

By: Lisa

Lisa — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 03:41:50 +0000

I would love your advice because due to a United employee giving me the wrong information, I will not qualify for Elite status. I am going to be 4,500 miles shy of Elite. I called United to ask if I would receive mileage if I booked a ticket on priceline which was something I had never done in the past. She said that I would received the miles and I said I wanted to be sure so I would qualify for Elite. It turned out she made an error and when I spoke to a supervisor they said there was nothing that could be done except they could offer me a voucher for $25.
Do you think there is someone that I could write to have this taken care of and maybe threatening to never fly United again would help? Thanks for your help.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:51:29 +0000

Various sites/blogs are reporting on the priority order. E.g.,

http://www.wanderingaramean.com/2009/11/continental-and-united-announce.html

I think the free E+ upgrade used to be available to Star Alliance elites (maybe only Gold level?) in the past, but that was yanked a few years ago.