Originally Posted by
talkingtalent
So as a US Chairman, soon to become Executive Platinum I am noticing a disturbing trend. Some flights I have been on upgrade no one and keep selling the seats right up to day of departure - come on - why should we be loyal?
Top tier flyers need to unite and demand more transparency from Airlines. We should know how many upgrade seats are available at time of booking - who wants to watch day after day while no one gets upgraded and seats are just available for sale. Because once all the flights are booked business people will have to book first so you lose.
What is with this new trend?
If you are talking about AA sticker upgrades for elites, the answer is that no upgrade seats are available at time of booking. That's not the model AA (or USdbaAA or any other airline) uses now.
Those upgrades are purely leftovers - that is inventory that would go unsold so it is then given away (for EXP/CP) or sold to other elites. Now they don't entirely wait to see what is not sold as RM has models that generate expected value of sold seats so as they get closer to departure, there is a significant probability that a number of seats will not be sold. If a flight has 16 F seats and only 2 are sold 48 hours before the flight, there is a pretty high probability there is 1 empty seat, a slightly lower probability 2... So, they start issuing upgrades then.
Why should we be loyal? In the last year, I have been upgraded on 90+% of my domestic segments. That, plus 8 SWU's (actually 9 last year - I used them all) is reason enough for me.