I hope I'll be forgiven if I don't navigate the entire thread. Let me explain what I'm trying to accomplish and ask if EF would be helpful for me.

1) I principally fly one route, PHL-LAS and return. I'd like a tool that would let me assess F availability, either as an elite upgrade or an award ticket. For example, when I buy a ticket I'd like to be able to guess at my UG chances when I take the flight (might have to track a particular flight for a while to see this, and it might vary by day of the week), or to see UG possibilities for an earlier or later flight on the day of departure. I am mostly flying USAir and I know things will change when the merger is completed in a couple of months, but their seat maps often block out the entire first row of F and I don't know if they have sold these seats or reserve them for departure or what. If I see an F cabin with 2 seats available, they might have 0 UG seats available, or 6.

2) In a related vein, I might try to go for AA EXP status to get unlimited upgrades, and I'd like to have a tool to assess whether this will get me up front 10% of the time or 90%.

3) I might occasionally want to assess the likelihood of successful use of systemwide UG's if I ever get them.

4) Fares vary widely on this route day to day and flight to flight. I'd like to be able to figure out if that low fare I see is the last seat available or if there are many such seats left. This may be very chancy, since it seems like US currently tries to match Spirit's fares on this route (some of their fares seem to be restricted by time of day, based on when Spirit has a competing flight) so US/AA might well have a low fare and as soon as Spirit sells out their lowest fare, US/AA might raise theirs.

Would EF be a useful tool for what I'm trying to do?