Originally Posted by
caimaster
I flew SFO-JFK-SFO for a couple times in the past 2 month and luckily my upgrade cleared everytime which was awesome. One trend I noticed was the F cabin was 50% filled with AA non-rev (Position flights for flight attendants). This might have been discussed on here before, but why doesn't AA just upgrade EXP or elites from J to F so it opens up more J for EXP to upgrade from Y or allow others to use miles and coupons.
Because I guess they need to balance the needs of their employees and their customers. But I don't think there's a real good, underlying reason why free/sticker upgrades are limited to Y->J only. There are pros and cons, and in the end I guess it was just a business decision.