I flew this route during the last week in February with my family and we needed 3 upgrades. I looked at the .pda site every day from january 1 until my flight day for the amount of people upgraded so I could gauge the chances of the upgrade coming through. Looking every day, there were only a few instances where there were people still on the upgrade list a few hours before flight time.

Around 30 days prior to the return flight (NRT-EWR) our 3 upgrades cleared and the outbound (EWR-NRT) cleared about 10 days prior.

That was 2 months ago and loads may be up on that route. As always, past performance does not predict future results.

Good luck on the upgrade. In the meantime I would check the seat map every day to see if a better seat opens up.

Keba