IflyfromABE

I think plane type is a. essential (i.e. if the same flight number goes some days with a pmUA 752 with 24 F seats and others with a 320 or 73G with 12 F seats, you need to know) and b. needs a subtype or at least the number of F seats because there is variation on planes like 752s and 738s to say a couple. Minimally, number of F seats on the plane would suffice (just to calculate chances correctly if someone wants to do that...)

Great effort, I'd love to participate

mgcsinc

Updates made. What do people think?

I agree that it helps to have an idea of what the purpose is. To me, it seems like the main purpose is: To get flyers as close as possible to an estimate of the likelihood of an upgrade on a particular segment, given various factors.

I do think we can afford to collect data that is not perfectly aligned with this goal, if it will be useful. My issue with paid upgrades is that I think that the questions to be asked are different (and the list is much shorter), so it seems like maybe a different beast to be dealt with another way. I know less about the Y/B/M-up situation. If there's not space in the right fare class at the time of booking, don't these end up being processed like the other upgrades, with a waitlist (albeit a separate one)? If so, seems like it fits.

I've moved aircraft down and asked for total seats in F, though I'm not convinced that this does the job due to different Y cabin sizes. Maybe I should stick both total seats and aircraft in the top section?

Do people think it will be difficult for people to fill out because certain related fields are separated into the top and bottom sections?

I took a look at openflights, which is very cool and which I might very well start using myself. The trouble is that I think it's more involved than udustats or the new tool, and people are already wondering about participation levels here. There are also aspects of this that are quite specific to united, which seems like it'd be clunky as part of that project.

Some folks have an incredible aversion to self-reported data. There's nothing wrong with it from first principles -- you just have to know its limitations. I think that udustats produced meaningful, analyzable data.

PVDProf

There are a whole series of questions that could be asked, especially when the payment is based on the paid fare basis and the lowest available upgradable fare for the customer. This makes the price paid much more idiosyncratic. But I think recording that paid upgrades are offered and taken on a given flight is useful.

It draws from a separate inventory, PN I think, prior to T-120. At T-120, it all goes on the same list for clearing. YBM-ups, regardless of status, outrank instrument upgrades.

lapeter

Are you up and running yet? I just but one in on your trial format but can"t see other results. Please let me know the link to post results.
Thanks,'Al

poverty.jet.set

Can you add "On board" to the "when did upgrade clear?" list? i.e. you are already sitting in your Y seat, then the GA comes aboard and moves you up.

Can you compact the form a little? Lots of scrolling... e.g. label left of box/listbox instead of above it

frequent traveler

Thanks for doing this! I did not "comply" with UDU stats, but I think I would be able to do this. This is probably not possible (tech luddite here), but if individual users could check their own individual success rates, that would be an incentive to input the data.


F.T.

mgcsinc

Results are not up and running yet, just testing out the form at the moment.

Do on-board upgrades happen on the basis of the normal waitlist priority system?

At the moment, because I'm trying to do this very simply with Google forms (which is flexible in some ways but very inflexible in others), we're stuck with white space. Though I had hoped to leave it solidly in Google forms land for the long term, to make it easier for myself and others to update, I will probably end up re-coding it once the questions are finalized, since it's so ugly.

I agree that letting people check their own stats is a good feature and incentive. There could even be a sort of top 10 list or something.

On a related note, are people going to get concerned about privacy if the raw data is made available. Making all of the data available seems like the best option to me -- that way people can slice and dice it however they want on their own, and suggest new display formats to be incorporated. But it could have privacy issues. Then again, people can always opt out of providing their username or other identifying info.

mgcsinc

I've made some changes to the time ranges to roughly align them with logical groupings of flights (early morning, pre-lunch, mid-day, after-work, evening/night, and late-night) -- do people think these make sense? You all fly a lot more than I have in the past.

Any more feedback about using the seats-in-F vs aircraft-type vs both would be much appreciated.

Finally, a request: If you have some time to kill, can you go in and create 5-10 (or 20, if you're incredibly bored) "dummy" records so that I can start playing with displaying the data? These don't have to be real.

Thanks for all the help!

Flying Machine

I normally posted on udustats and never logged in. I liked that I could see plane type, status, time cleared and whom received the u/g. It was a snap to post a minute or less. If you dont have time for that, what do you??

mgcsinc

I think this was just a general comment in favor, but let me know if it was a specific comment/idea and I'm missing something.

Flying Machine

Yes, in favor and posted what I liked about udustats.. Thanks for trying to make something happen here. I will use what ever you end up working with. Just make it simple and fast. Hope to see it soon.. Thanks and Safe Travels.. Just a suggestion, please place the link in your signature or something so we dont have to fish to find it..

linsj

Thanks for taking on this project. I used the old one a lot and posted my stats.

I'd like to see when upgrade cleared in the essential section.

For me, posting has to be quick and simple. Any info that doesn't show in my reservation or on my boading pass, like total # seats in F, require extra time I don't have.

RockinRon

I added a few segments this morning. Pretty quick and easy and will continue to use it as travel picks up for me. Please add E-170 as aircraft type and if you are asking for junk data, please have people flag it as such. I used real data but if you toss it all to make sure it's not invalidating your datasets, you toss my real results, too.

Nice job!

mgcsinc

Total seats in F was added as a proxy for plane version, since people might have trouble describing exactly what plane they were on, but might be able to easily say how many seats were in F (especially if they were watching the waitlist like hawks). Unfortunately, neither appears on boarding passes, but having information about F availability is important for understanding why a particular upgrade attempt succeeded or failed.

I've been avoiding calling for real data because certain aspects of the input might change and make it tough to view the data alongside new data that comes in once the form is finalized. Assuming that no major changes happen, though, I'll keep your data.

mgcsinc

I've gone ahead and grabbed the domain WillItClear.com for this little project.

Let me know if you don't like it -- domains are less than the price of a latte these days, so I can always use a different one.