I have been running at about 90% this year as a DM on a ton of TUV fares, and ATL connections. So all and all, not bad!
With that, I have noticed something odd when I SDC. I moved to the 7am flight from a flight this evening. I was 5 on the list for 5 seats. Luckily I still managed to clear on the last seat available. What was odd is several people in front of me were upgraded at the gate and were greeted as "thanks for being a Gold Medallion..Ect" Heck, even a FO cleared ahead of me.
I was clearly not at the back of the list of 35 deep, but any idea how these folks would be in front of me? My upgrade success is consistently much much worse when I SDC, but this was the first time I had known exactly "who" was on the list in front of me.
Thanks!