I will admit that I do have a great deal of flexibility in scheduling my flights. Because of that, as I mentioned earlier, my partner and I have probably used 100+ SWUs successfully on long-haul international flights in the last 5 years, without ever having to fly in the back on AA metal. And the great thing is that if I run out, my friends who don't fly a lot of international can gift me a few, so I never need to use miles+copay! Also, AA has NO published fares which you cannot upgrade.