Originally Posted by
cordelli
Start looking at flights every day, all day long. In the status see how many people are on the waiting list for upgrades. If there's 45 people on the upgrade list for sixteen seats already checked in full, you know that's not a day and time you want to fly.
Eventually you will get a pattern that may help your odds.
That's a great idea. For CPU fanatics, I suppose this should be a no-brainer - it's common knowledge that F upgrade lists exists on .bomb for all multi-cabin flights and is available for every flight several days out. But analyzing that data over time to maximize one's CPU chances never crossed my mind.
Any coders want to scrape that data and analyze it, at least for major hub routes? (Or is that prohibited by UA's TOS?) Seems like this data set would be far more reliable than UDU Stats, given its miniscule sample size and selection bias. Granted, the .bomb upgrade list doesn't reveal the status of pax or if they used instruments - but extrapolating that data shouldn't be too difficult. We already have a rough idea of the elite "pyramid" - presumably the ratios aren't all that different from 2005, even if the absolute figures are.