All hypothetical at this point and I don't have all these fare codes figured out yet.....

Looking at the international upgrade award charts, it looks like the only fares that are upgradeable using miles are YBCDMH (North America to Asia, for example, is 15,000 for YB fares and 30,000 for CDMH fares).

So that mean that there is NO WAY to upgrade any other coach fares (short of just dropping the 90K miles for a business class seat)? So if I purchase a "V" fare from IAD-BKK I can't upgrade with miles?

Is there ANY method to upgrade this fare? SWU? (and how do you get SWUs?) or something else? And are all the upgrades limited due to capacity controls and can they be confirmed at the time of ticketing? What do you get with which method?

Thanks.