Originally Posted by ztug

Before I retired 2 years ago I was getting probably 50% upgrades in the summer and 25% in the winter between Newark and Florida with just gold. I guess it does depend on the routes and the day of the week. I tell my wife not to depend on it when we are competing with business Travelers between hubs obviously. tomorrow we're flying from Orlando to Las Vegas via Houston and they switched planes to smaller first class cabins and we're like 6 and 7th on the upgrade list with full cabins already. No joy. We'll be lucky if we have an empty seat between us in an exit row.

I earned my million Miler status 1,000 miles at a time between Florida and Newark mostly. Not with long haul international flights.