Originally Posted by
mre5765
That's true and who cares? We are interested in the UDU success/failure ratio of the informed elites who care about sitting in the front. IOW, the ratios of elite FTers. The success rate of the legendary GS that is oblivious to his status matters not.
I hear what you're saying, and can appreciate the point of view... but it doesn't change the fact that you cannot consider the results as being statistically sound. Focusing in on the "informed elites" does not mean that the aggregate data is any more or less accurate or useful. Whether or not someone is an FTer or cares about sitting in the front has no impact on the true success rate of an upgrade clearing for everyone else.
Being primarily on the same routing and days for the past 2+ years, I see a few of the same 1K's on my flights who never flew in F before UDU... now those folks are in F. Assuming they didn't start buying F tickets, they are not reporting their successes. Not to mention the 20-30 people that did not get the UDU who didn't report the failure.
I find that the information is very useful when you see Flt# XXX and Status level XX with Fare Code XXX to gauge UG potential for specific routes, but I think we can agree that there are many forces in effect that impact success rate. It would be very interesting to see actual stats from UAL.
Originally Posted by
mre5765
And I suspect I dominate the DEN- and -DEN stats, at least for SAN, SFO, and SJC. That's the point. It is biased toward FTers. Our successes and failures are all that matter. If a vocal elite community of UA's finds success under UDU, then it matters not to UA if the sheep fail.
Absolutely, I would be singing another tune and there would likely be much more reporting and uproar (even for non-FTers) if is wasn't "successful". And what is success? For me... the fact that I have a high chance for a free upgrade. For UAL... the fact that I know 1P reduces my chances enough that I will do what I can to retain 1K in 2011. I understand the value of having a vocal elite community, but our discussion is really focused on the applicability of the results rather than the happiness of select top-tier elites.
Originally Posted by
mre5765
If anything my UDU success rate far exceeds that of all 1K FTers. That's the benefit of closely reading the threads to avoid getting shafted.
Congrats on using the info to keep your percentages up... as I said using the data to dial into specifics is much more useful than looking at it in total. Unfortunately, I haven't had the flexibility (or need) to change routings to heighten my potential successes.
Aside from GS, as 1K's we seem to consistently benefit from UDU the most compared to other elites. My experience has been that I'm shooting over 90%. But note that my flights have waiting lists of 30-40 people going for 2-4 seats at the gate. Taking the fact that UDU may have cleared during the windows out of the equation, let's conservatively say that all seats on a A320 are available for UDU: 12/30 doesn't get you close to the 72% success rate that the stats tracker shows for all levels reporting for the A320. (I know there's a major assumption that there is always a waitlist of 30 ppl, but that's what I've seen). For a while
IADLayover had people add in the waitlist length... that data would have been valuable to interpret the overall success.
All of that said, I suppose OP's best bet is to use the stats website to make a slightly informed decision should they decide to hope for UDU vs using miles... but to also understand its limitations and inherent bias.