Good question, Mr Nice, and one for which I don't necessarily have a crystal clear answer, except that it just always works out that way for us. The last time we used miles to upgrade was on our first major UA trip, SEA/LAX/HNL for the PIP, in 1999. (For that trip they comped us to PremEx and let us go into the red to upgrade to the upper deck, which turned out to be a good gamble for UA and a truly memorable FT experience for us.)

We use our SWUs for three paid international trips a year, and usually take one or two international award trips during the very high-priced summer season--last year we were blessed to get Concorde awards and we loved that.

It certainly helps that we are both 1ks so that we can each upgrade ourselves from our own stock. It was very hard the first year when I was the only 1k and had to upgrade Hunki out of my stash as well.

It is the availability of sufficient North Americn upgrades which I can't necessarily explain or predict. I used to think it was because they frequently forgot to take paper certs, but now after, a year or so of electronic North Americans, we still ended up having one to give away before it expired at the end of February. For our next UA trip we will be using 3 Regionals that are about to expire and one 2003 SWU.

Sometimes, of course, there is a last minute flight change or unallocated first class seats on a flight, which makes it possible to use 500s instead of Regionals, and we do from time to time still get paper Regionals and additional electronic certs for one reason or another.

Sometimes electronic certs just show up, as if by magic, in our accounts, and I have not yet called up to demand an explanation, so I can't tell you why. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Actually, deelmakur, even under the old (last year's) system, they did hold back some first class inventory for sale and it was often very difficult to find an upgrade seat on a transcon even months out. We bought several UA tickets instead of AS tickets last year for that very reason.

This year "very difficult" has become "impossible", at least for us.

You are absolutely right, however, that the real issue is, "Too many people chasing too few chairs". In any event, the truth is that the chairs aren't particularly comfortable anyway. I am not very big and very flexible and still have a hard time getting comfy on AS.

We flew AS SEA/LAS in row 1 last night and I managed to get into a position where I could sleep a little, but the seat was still hard.

I also noticed that the crew was not as friendly as they used to be. It seems like there is an internal unhappiness that is spreading throughout AS, so maybe their budget cuts are affecting their staff as well as their customers.

Carfield, I view this as a dicussion, not a fight.