Mystery Solved

I fly alot. So much so that I fall into a special category for my airline that represents the top 10% of their fliers. I have over a million frequent flier miles. Imagine my surprise when there were 14 people upgraded ahead of me on a recent flight from EWR to DEN. I don't get upgraded on every flight, but generally if there are 14 people upgraded on a particular flight, I'm going to be one of them. Flying from DEN back to EWR 4 days later, there were 15 people upgraded to First Class, and I was still # 5 on the list. I haven't flown any less this year than in the past. I had to get to the bottom of what was going on.

Come to find out, that many of these people who were upgraded either paid their way into First Class or used miles to upgrade. Continental recently began offering this as an option to customers, and the fees for this varies. Usually it's 15,000 miles/segment though. I never thought that there would be that many people who would pay sometimes $300+ for it. Kudos to Continental for apparently finding another revenue stream.

Bonus- For those of you who read this and guess on the Airport pictures on FB, the Great Lakes Brewing Company picture is from Cleveland.