Originally Posted by
ACSBill
I always chuckle when someone says this. Looking at your own words, on 3 occasions you were able to move from presumably a Y seat to a J seat. Now if used on international or transcon (which is what should be done), you moved from a $100's seat to a $1,000's seat. So you either saved money, personally, or were able to personally fly in a nicer seat that what you business pays for. I see value there.
Ideally, I'd use them to upgrade a TPAC. Since AA is killing off their ex-ORD TPAC flights, I'd have to go to DFW or LAX to use an SWU. Not really worth it when JL and CX both fly from BOS.
The first two I used were applied to a TATL trip in April. I booked the trip at that time on AA (despite the weather) only because there was open C space. My destination was HEL, which necessitated some pretty inconvenient routings (BOS-PHL-ZRH-HEL//HEL-CDG-ORD-BOS) to make it work. Absent the SWU, I'd have flown BA instead (for convenience). It all worked out and was nice to be up front for cheap, but there were definitely trade-offs. I could have just as easily upgraded each TATL for 25k + $350; that's closer to what the SWU is actually worth, not 1000's.
The third SWU was used to upgrade paid J to F on LHR-JFK. Based on how poor F is on AA, it was a complete waste of an SWU. I only used it because I knew I'd have no further opportunities to use one this year. The remainder of my planned travel is on BA, QR and NZ.
So, yes, there is value in SWUs. But given that I don't live at an AA hub, the value is more limited for me.