Originally Posted by
jdang
I have gold status from a promotion and only flew AA once 5 years ago.
Flew from DEN-LAX-HKG (Wednesday. Thrusday 12 am for LAX-HKG flight) and HKG-LAX-DEN(Tuesday)
Requested upgrade using miles and copay 2 weeks prior to first flight because I heard it cleared pretty easy(I had to transfer points otherwise I would have requested earlier).
For DEN to LAX and LAX to HKG, nothing cleared but I was 2nd on the waitlist for LAX-HKG. Only seats open was 2 first class and 2 other people 5 and 6th on the list got upgraded to it. I probably would have gotten upgraded if I requested earlier than 2 weeks before the flight.
For HKG-LAX and LAX-DEN both cleared about 2 weeks before the flight(Requested about 3 weeks before the flight). There were still 7/8 first class seats open when I checked the day before with 0 business class seat. I didn't check if anybody got upgraded.
If you were booked in Economy originally, you would not have been upgraded at all to First Class. Any upgrade instrument works only for upgrade to the next class of service. If all 8 of the First Class seats on the LAX-HKG were open, you still would not have been upgraded into them. Your upgrade would only clear into Business Class, and only if there were availability.
In terms of upgrade priority, the time you requested the upgrade probably had nothing to do with it, since AA processes upgrades first by status, and then by rolling 12-month EQD spend within each status level. You would have been behind all Concierge Keys, all Executive Platinums, all Platinum Pros, all Platinums, and all Golds with a higher spend in the last 12 months (which, given that you've flown them once in the last 5 years, means your rolling EQD was zero), regardless of when they requested the upgrade. The only people below you on the waitlist would have been Golds with 0 EQD who requested an upgrade after you, and all non-status passengers.