Originally Posted by
EAlyse
Thanks! Both Flights are on a 737. Flight on the way out is Monday afternoon (2:40pm) and F and E+ are both wide open so hoping not too much changes. On the way back it's a Sunday redeye so I'm thinking there will be many more people looking to upgrade on that flight, but with no lie-flats it may not be a huge priority. E+ is getting pretty full on the way back, but unclear if those are elites, subscriptions or buy-ups. Right now we are already in E+ since my husband has a subscription as we didn't know if he would make Silver before the trip, but having it for the EWR-SFO legs is a big ^. So despite being unsure of the upgrade we'll at least have a bit more legroom.
Yeah, I'd rate your chances as much better on the way out than on the way back. Most passengers with advance E+ seat assignments are probably gold or above, but obviously there are exceptions. Still -- wide open E+ is a good omen. For a lot of routes, 4 weeks is too early to expect the seat map to mean much, but I think most people plan Hawaiian trips a little further in advance.
Since you already have E+ seats by virtue of the subscription, personally I would delay check-in until I arrived at the airport in EWR. Then -- assuming you haven't already cleared -- check the upgrade standby list for SFO-OGG. Compare the number of empty seats in F to the number of passengers on the upgrade list, after subtracting any who appear on both the upgrade and standby lists. If there are still a few seats left over after you do that, you might consider splitting and hoping for the upgrade. If not, you can decline the upgrade during the check-in process and avoid having the record split.
I should point out that time of check-in is a tiebreaker on the visible upgrade list -- it's the last tiebreaker, after status and fare class. So, this strategy trades a slight decrease in the possibility of clearing the upgrade for a better insight into whether or not splitting is worthwhile.