Hello AA FlyerTalk,

I've been reading up on upgrades and ticket classes etc. in the stickied threads here - they're great! I've been able to work out a lot of information, but I need advice from people who know better than I do how this all works. Here are the details. For each of these flights I have three seats together:

TUE 03DEC AA 1126 DENVER 7:45 AM MIAMI INTERNTNL 1:35 PM Q

TUE 03DEC AA 795 MIAMI INTERNTNL 5:30 PM ST THOMAS 9:00 PM Q

MON 16DEC AA 672 ST THOMAS 4:25 PM MIAMI INTERNTNL 6:30 PM N

MON 16DEC AA 1391 MIAMI INTERNTNL 8:25 PM DENVER 10:40 PM Q

I opted to book into Economy for these flights after getting wonderful info from Flyertalk in another thread. For my family, given the cost differential between Econ and Domestic First/Business and the length of the flights Economy made the most sense for us. We do not have any miles on AA Advantage.

My question for all of you is, is it worthwhile to purchase 12 $30 upgrades for these flight segments? My confusion stems from the fact that I understand that buying these upgrades puts in an upgrade REQUEST, but does not guarantee an upgrade. I would consider paying $360 to upgrade 3 people across 4 segments a pretty great deal, but obviously would be sad to put in requests and also $400 and get nothing. Also, we do not have any kind of status, so I think we would be at the bottom of the list after anyone with higher status who puts in a 500 mile/$30 upgrade request. Correct?

Are the odds good that we would be upgraded or is this just a creative way to throw away $360?

Thank you FlyerTalk!