Originally Posted by
monkeys
In that case, is it true that there should never be a list that has both a) available seats and b) passengers on the list? (i.e. if there were available seats, they would be given to passengers in priority order, until either there were no seats left, or no passengers left on the list)? That seems to match what I'm typically seeing - first class usually has a couple seats with an empty list, and business usually (always?) has a small number of passengers with zero seats available. I may have seen a flight or two with 1 or 2 business class seats and no passengers, but don't recall ever seeing both seats and passengers on the same list.
Definitely not true. I'd say what you're seeing is the exception, rather than the rule. Far more common to see say 15 people on the airport upgrade list with 1 or 2 open seats, etc.
Originally Posted by
monkeys
Follow-up question: in the cases where there are people on the upgrade list but no seats (say for a flight departing a few hours from now), how often are additional seats released for upgrades? Are all of the upgrades assigned well before the flight (and thus before the waitlists are even published), or if I appear on a waitlist with zero seats, do I still have a chance of being upgraded?
AA never assigns all of the seats for upgrades well before the flight. They will typically always hold at least 1 or 2 seats for sale and not release these for upgrades until right before departure at the gate. If you're looking at the waitlist in the app and it shows 0 seats available, that means there's 0 seats available for sale in business class. The only way that AA could release any additional upgrade space is if a confirmed passenger cancelled or changed flights, which does happen.