huge

This thread is turning into a woolly beast, but I'm having fun with it!

So now the votes are surging for MSP or MEM over SLC. I guess since I'm flying to Florida someone has to make the election/recount joke. OH my god ... I can do even better ... not only am I flying to Florida, but I'm going there to play in the "CHAD Brown Poker Series" ... get it? ... hanging/dimpled/pregnant "chads"? OK, I'll stop.


So as a very unscientific experiment I'm looking at first-class tickets for flights today and tomorrow SEA-MCO on the different routings we're talking about. I'm just looking on Kayak, so I'm guessing there's a better way to do it (ITA? I don't have ExpertFlyer). A couple things have come up that are interesting/confusing:

- If I force it to look at flights today, it only shows ATL connections. There are a couple of non-ATL routings still left for today, but I assume that means that F is sold out on them, and only available on ATL. Obviously that doesn't mean that ATL is better for UG - but interesting. I'll look again tomorrow earlier in the morning when the early non-ATL routes haven't departed yet.

- Some flights show up as fare code F0 and some as YA00UPMC. Some show both ways (with one having a later connecting flight) and the numbers of F seats available will be different. I assume that YA00UPMC is a Y->upgrade fare or something that is cheaper to purchase?

And then on tomorrow's flights here are the numbers, where X/Y means seats available in 1st on the SEA-XXX/XXX-MCO legs:

12:50AM MSP 4/6 F0
6:00AM SLC 5/3 YA00UPMC
6:00AM LAX 2/2 F0
6:10AM ATL 2/2 F0
6:30AM JFK 9+/3 YA00UPMC (9+!!)
7:10AM MSP 2/1 YA00UPMC
8:30AM ATL 9+/4 F0
8:30AM ATL 9+/9+ F0 (later connecting flt)
8:32AM MSP 2/3 YA00UPMC
9:10AM DTW 1/4 YA00UPMC
11:43AM ATL 9+/1 F0/BA00UPNJ
12:27PM MSP 2/3 YA00UPMC
12:40PM MSP 3/3 F0
1:25PM ATL 7/8 YA00UPMC
10:55PM ATL 3/2 YA00UPMC
11:15PM DTW 2/5 F0


I know this isn't all that helpful, since it's just what's available for purchase and we don't know how many elites there are on any flight that haven't been UG'd yet, etc etc. But I did think it was interesting that two of the SEA-ATL flights show 9+ F seats available (and one shows 7) while all the other routings are lower. I'm certainly not going to trust that over everyone here saying that ATL is the worst choice, and I'm perfectly happy to be told why these numbers are completely misleading/worthless.

Is there any way to find out how many people got upgraded on specific flights in the last few days? That would obviously be much more relevant data.