Originally Posted by imapilotaz

If you fly often, buy an expertflyer subscription and put up an alert for that flight. Sure AA may open up availability at anytime and that AA does run automatic sweeps that could clear your SWU, but my experience is that once "C" class opens up, it will disappear pretty quickly on a main trunk route like that due to folks having alerts already... Once you get the alert, just call AA to apply your SWU right then. Takes just a few minutes.

if you just "wait" for it to auto clear, you very well may miss out on potential availability opening up by others of us that have an alert on that flight and snagging it. Keep in mind its pretty common to have a couple dozen EXPs on a flight like DFW-LHR and they are all fighting for that same upgrade.