I have been following the miles and upgrade certifcates available on Ebay (look in "Other Travel") for about 12 months. There are tons of upgrade certificates available for United and American, much less for NorthWest and Continental.

The problem with MOST of the upgrades on United are they cannot be confirmed in advance. And unless you have status with the airline, you will be the very LAST person upgraded and only if there is a seat available when checking in at the gate that day. For me, this is not an option.

During the past year, I only saw 1 "confirmed in advance" upgrade for sale for Continental, and that was for South America and only one way. It sold for $175, which isn't bad considering Newark to Rio is 10-11 hours and you'd be upgrading without miles. I did not buy that one.

For NorthWest there have been several "Upgrade ANY Fare" certficates for sale the past three months from one seller for both Europe and Transpacific. The winning bid averages $320 and this would allow you to upgrade IN ADVANCE from ANY economy fare to World Business Class - and without using miles. Frankly, it sounded too good to be true.

Well, I purchased one of the Transpacific upgrade certificates 2 weeks ago. I paid $330 and received the certificates 4 days later. Last night, I called NWA knowing they had a Q fare for $800 from JFK - BKK (Q fares are not upgradeable with miles, only B and M). The phone transaction took over 30 minutes - this agent had never heard of the certifcate I was using, but after carefully reading all the rules, everything checked out.

He made the reservation and said I needed to go to an NWA ticket office and show them the certifcates in order to complete the transaction. First thing this morning, I showed up at the NWA ticket office near Grand Central, armed with my certifcates, reservation, credit card, OnePass Platinum Card and seat map from seatguru.com.

10 minutes later I had confirmed WBC seats on all four segments upstairs - I had the choice of ANY seat I wanted!

So for the low price of just over $1,100 I have confirmed WBC seats on all segments, without using miles - and I will earn 48,000 miles on this trip (Platinum gets 125% of miles flown).

If anyone knows of a better deal for Biz Class Seats -I'd like to hear about it.

Wallstreet ... there is a TON of FF info on www.flyertalk.com regarding upgrades, status, ebay, etc. In general, there are confirmed upgrades avialable from AA and UA you can get on ebay. For UA, they are either System Wide Upgrades (SWU's) or Sweetspot Upgrades. For a while the SWU's were only applicable on higher fares, but they were changed back to be used on any fare. The AA upgrades are VIP03's (issued in 2003) or VIP04's (issued in 2004). These are also good on any fare and can be found on ebay.

Some words of caution on both ... These are capacity controlled, meaning that they may have open seats in biz when you request the upgrade, but that invientroy may not be available. So contact the airline before you buy the tix, get the upgrade, then shop online for the certificates. Second, the arilines do not like these being sold on ebay AT ALL. If they access your profile, they will send you all sorts of nasty emails after you win the auction. Only bid on auctions that are marked "Private" to avoid this. And make sure you have a good story about how you got the upgrade (e.g. a gift from my friend Tom) when you use them at the airport. Any hint that you bought them and bye-bye upgrades.

One last bit of advice. The upgrades that were issued on 2003 are now expiring by March 2004, so there will be lots of them available at reasonable prices. If you can travel in the end of March, you cna get them for a song.

Rchapstick,

The reason why the Northwest certificate was so valuable to me was:

A. I'm platinum on OnePass, and although that shouldn't have made a difference with this particular certifcate, it didn't hurt;

B. I get the miles (plus platinum bonus miles;

C. AA doesn't fly to Bangkok

D. I have NEVER been able to get into the UA biz class inventory at the time of purchase, even if it's three months out. I will absolutely NOT play the wait and see game and HOPE I get upgraded at the gate. I just won't fly coach for 20 hours.

I may ask UA for status matching towards the end of this year. That should help with getting into the upgrade inventory. UA's biz product, however, is not in the same class as CO's BF or NWA WBC (all of their 747's will have the new WBC by November of this year. So far, Continental has done right by me.

And yeah, the upgrades that expire in March can be had for a song - I noticed that last March. May have to plan a trip for next March on UA if I status match.

I also agree with you about the info on flyertalk. I log on there almost every day.

Good advice on where the certs came from. I know the airlines are trolling eBAy looking to bust people, so you do have to be careful. Me? I was lucky enough to have an Uncle who flies a lot on KLM and was given these certificates, which he then gave to me since he doesn't fly to Asia. I WAS asked by both the phone reservationist and ticketing agent how I got the certifcates - that was my story.

Wallstreet:

Scoring an upgrade to BKK on UA is nearly impossible, even if you are 1K. Your chances improve on getting the upgrade off the waitlist if you have status, but they do not allocate extra inventory for their elite members. Sucks, huh?

BTW, the granting of UA elite is a one-shot deal. They will match status, up to premier exec (not 1K) for a single year. After that, you have to earn it and they will not comp status again.

WRT AA, you can use the upgrade to Tokyo, and then connect on a codeshare (JL) to BKK, but the upgrades cannot be used on a codeshare flight. At least the transpac would be upgraded.

That is a good deal you have on NW, especially as you earn miles and status points.

Wallstreet, Try buying tickets from BKK to the U.S. Just do a one-way or award ticket to BKK and then you can start all your flights from BKK, fares for business class can be had for about $2000 and are upgradeable to First many times. Second the flyertalk.com recommendation.

Any tips on finding "United Airlines Confirmed Systemwide Upgrade" coupons at low prices other than eBay?

Got a nice deal on a couple United flights through Vayama.com and ticket class Q economy. Research shows I could use a Confirmed Systemwide Upgrade to get me into business on ORD-NRT and HKG-ORD flights.

Thanks

I've been finding lately it is harder to use the United systemwide upgrades irrespective of whether you purchase them or get them directly from United. One of the reasons (from a list of about 20) I no longer fly that god awful airline.