Originally Posted by intuition

Well, that final sentence kind of proves you are not at all able to see the point some are making.

For as long as I've been a member, AY+ was exactly that program. With only minor flexibility in dates we were able to redeem, not only our own voucher upgrades but also family upgrades. All the time. To all the desired destinations.

"availability was never great" Pft. Talk is cheap. Give us some examples during the period 2010 to say 2019 where availability for upgrades was poor. No sweeping statements, give us actual examples of when you went into the upgrade availability search and it was zeroed out for several days/weeks/months in a row.

Let's look at the popular claim "Singapore is always difficult". Well, here are the real numbers, examplified with number of seats Finnair officially published as award seats on AY81 as a function of days before departure. Data is from Q1-2016.



Oops, looks like you needed zero flexibility to get an upgrade, as they in general published 5-8 upgrade seats every day. Similar patterns applied for other periods and other destinations. The standard number of seats varied by destination (4 seats were very common) but it was never zero. Sometimes there was blackout dates and/or weekdays, but at T-330 there was not a single destination in the longhaul network that had a full week zeroed out.

And oops, it looks like you didn't have to trawl the system 11 months in advance either to get lucky - seats were available all the way up until a few days before departure. Again, this is published availabilty for upgrades, meaning they were processed immediately upon request. No waitlist success-rate BS. Seats available = upgrade 100% cleared.

So yes, we prefer "guaranteed upgrade over six 50% ones," because that is figuratively how the upgrades in AY+ used to work.
So just stop trying to belittle others who can actually compare the program of the previous decade to the current one, where awards and upgrades share the same zeroed out bucket.

Originally Posted by Richey66

It seems to me, that at least HEL-SIN route, on any given day max number of upgrades for points available is now 2. Used to be 5 or even more.
Does anybody has experience, if those 2 are booked up, will there more open up? Thai Airways used to have this few years ago, not sure if they have anymore.

Originally Posted by Steve_Hun

Can only repeat what Ikrt has already wrote. And to add a little to it, bought HEL-SIN-HEL value ticket in Jan for Easter (mid April). The HEL-SIN leg had one available upgrade slot, that I've managed to grab using the online upgrade tool. For The SIN-HEL leg there was no upgrade availability, so I've asked CS to waitlist me. The upgrade cleared ~3 days prior the return flight.

Similar experience with JFK-HEL leg. Stayed waitilisted for few months and upgrade cleared few days before return flight.

Originally Posted by The_Director

Earlier this year I was on the waitlist for JFK-HEL upgrade for 2 months...they had at least 11 available seats according to expertflyer.com when they said that I'd be put on the waitlist.

The day before the flight there was 3-4 available seats.

No upgrade. Flew home with a 39° fever in economy comfort.

AY Plat status didn't deliver

There was a storm in NYC area the day after, and I bet that some people with a flight for the storm day changed their flight to the day before to secure they'd have a flight, and the rest of the J seats were gone with the wind.

But 8 weeks prior the flight waitlisted. Damn. Still hurts my brain

Originally Posted by FFlash

Another data point which I don't remember experiencing before or heard here.

EU shorthaul flights, at least some of them (mine LHR) seem to have 4 seats reserved for booking upgrades. I have a larger group that i tried to upgrade with plat line, and the agent could directly close 4 upgrades (I saw before that the cabin was empty). Later I checked the online tool and it indeed seems to produce availability 4 as max.
Not sure if this is useful information, but anyway
Another thing is that they tend to open more upgrade space on-the-go if booking situation allows. Too bad my group is still waiting for those other upgrades to open, I need to call again plat line soon to inquire.

Originally Posted by FFlash

And now I got an email, which I have not seen before


FINNAIR
CUSTOMER CARE CENTER
01053 FINNAIR
TELEPHONE: +358 9 818 0800
FAX : +358 981831876
Waitlist Confirmation Status
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear

Your waitlisted Business Class upgrade request was not confirmed at this time. The status of your request will be checked again five days before departure and an email notification will be sent to you automatically. If the upgrade is confirmed, you will receive an updated ticket by email.

Reservation details:
Booking reference:
Membership Number:
Flight Number: AY 839
From: Helsinki
To: London
Flight date:
Best Regards,
Finnair Plus

Originally Posted by Steve_Hun

Got the same e-mail from them in April, for my SIN-HEL upgrade request. At the end, it cleared a few days prior departure.

Originally Posted by intuition

Tool is broken.
Availability is a false positive, at least that is what they said when I called in.