Originally Posted by IslandSkies

Just curious, but has anybody ever thought that maybe the reason for lower success rates on international upgrades is the fact that the introduction of lie-flats in business has greatly reduced the ratio of premium seats available to upgrade into? I know for the sUA fleet on some aircraft types the number of premium cabin seats dropped drastically with the IPTE renovations. That would seem to be more a matter of logistics - the same (or more) amount of people wanting to upgrade into far less available seats. And the airline is in a tight spot here - before we had the lie-flats we heard it from every direction that we were falling behind the times and other airlines in regards to the hard product. You can't exactly add all those lie-flats and keep the number of premium cabin seats the same, they take up WAY more room.